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THE 

DEATH-BLOW 



TO 



SPIRITUALISM 



BEING 

THE TRUE STORY OF THE FOX SISTERS, AS RE- 
VEALED BY AUTHORITY OF MARGARET FOX 
KANE AND CATHERINE FOX JENCKEN. 



&• 





BY 



/ 



REUBEN BRIGGS DAVENPORT. 



♦e 



^' C 0PYRIGHT ^ 

NOV 17I8R8 ' 



NEW YORK: 

G. W. Dillingham, Publisher, 

Successor to G. W. Carleton & Co. 

MDCCCLXXXVIII. 



^ 



^\^ 



Copyright, 1888, 

BY 

Reuben Briggs Davenport. 
[ [All Bights Reserved.] 



Stereotyped by 

Samuel Stoddeb, 

42 Det Stbeet.N. Y. 



TO 

MRS. HESTER S. DWINELLE. 



" Alonso. This is as strange a maze as ere men trod, 
And there is in this business more than nature 
Was ever conduct of : some oracle 
Must rectify our knowledge. 

" Pbospero. Sir, my liege, 

Do not infest your mind with beating on 
The strangeness of this business : at picked leisure, 
Which shall be shortly, single I'll resolve you 
(Which to you shall seem probable) of every 
These happen' d accidents : till when be cheerful, 
And think of each thing well. — Come hither, spirit ; 
Set Caliban and his companions free : 
Untie the spell." 

Shakespeare. —The Tempest 
[iii] 



PREFACE. 



This book has been written in extreme haste. It does 
not pretend to literary style. But it pretends to absolute 
truthfulness and a reverent regard for justice. 

Its sole value is its character as a contribution to the 
real history of Spiritualism. As such, it is unquestion- 
ably of great importance, greater even than any work of 
the kind that has been published since the beginning of 
modern Spiritualism. 

It is, in fact, what its title sets forth— " The DEATH- 
BLOW to SPIRITUALISM." 

No one who does not' love illusion for illusion's sake — 
better, in other words, than he loves the truth — can, 
after reading this volume, remain a follower of Spirit, 
ualism and its hypocritical apostles. 

The full authorization of Mrs. Margaret Fox Kane 
and Mrs. Catherine Fox Jencken for the publication 
of this work will be found on the next to the following 
page. 

29th October, 1888. 

[v] 



We hereby approve of Mr. Reuben 
B. Davenport's design to write a 
true account of the origin of 
Spiritualism and of our connection 
therewith, and we authorize him to 
make proper use of all data and 
material that we furnish him. 
New York, 15th Oct., 1888. 






/Cj&LAA&—m 



CONTENTS 



INTRODUCTION. 

Poetic Justice of the Exposure. . 



• 13 



II. 



lapter. 


RENUNCIATION. ' 


Page 


I. 


" God Has Not Ordered It* 


. 25 


II. 


The Discomfited Enemy. 


. 39 


III. 


A Second Blow. .... 


. 53 


IV. 


The Hand of the Persecutor. 


. 60 


V. 


Solemn Abjuration. . . • 
III. 

HISTORY. ' 


. . 65 



VI. Origin of the Fraud. . 
VII. Garbled and Distorted Testimony. 



81 

94 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter 

VIII. Development of the Fraud. 
IX. The Mercenary Campaign. . 
X. Spiritualistic Boomerangs. . 
XI. The Supreme Audacity of Fraud 
XII. A Scientific Jury. 
XIII. The Unalterable Verdict. 



Page 
102 

121 
131 
150 
164 
201 



IV. 

REPENTANCE, 

XIV. The Heart Pleads for the Soul. 
XV. From Shadow to Light. 



• . 



. 209 
231 



Index 241 



I. 

INTRODUCTION. 



INTEODUCTION. 



POETIC JUSTICE OF THE EXPOSURE. 

That the inventors of an infamous fraud 
should deal to it its death-blow, is the poetic 
justice of fate. 

Over the creature, the creator has power of 
life and death. 

The creators of Spiritualism abjure its infamy. 

They decree its death. 

They condemn it to final destruction. 

They fasten upon those who continue to prac- 
tice it the obloquy of history, and the scorn of 
mankind for all time to come. 

Margaret and Catharine Fox, the youngest 
of three sisters, were the first to produce " spirit- 
ualistic manifestations." 

[13] 



14 POETIC JUSTICE OF THE EXPOSURE. 

They are now the most earnest in denun- 
ciation of those impostures ; the most eager to 
dissipate the foolish belief of thousands in the 
flimsiest s} r stem of deception that was ever 
cloaked with the hypocrisy of so-called religion. 

When, as by accident, they discovered a 
method of deceiving those around them by means 
of mysterious noises, they were but little children, 
innocent of the thought of wrong, ignorant of the 
world and the world's guile, and imagining only 
that what they did was a clever lark, such as the 
adult age easily pardons to exuberant and 
sprightly youth. 

Not to them did the base suggestion come that 
this singular, this simple discovery, should be the 
means of deluding the world, of exalting them in 
the minds of the weakly credulous and of bringing 
them fame and splendor and sumptuous pleasure. 

No one who learns their true history can still 
believe them guilty of the willful inception of 
this most grotesque, most transparent and cor- 
rupting of superstitions. 



POETIC JUSTICE OF THE EXPOSURE. 15 

The idea had its monstrous birth in older I 
heads, heads that were seconded by hearts lack- 
ing the very essence of truth and the fountain 
of honest human sympathy. 

The two children, who had at first delighted, 
as younglings will, in what was but a laughable 
mystification, were dragged into a sordid, wicked 
and loathsome speculation, built upon lying and 
fraud, as unforgivable as the sin of Satan, and of 
which they were but the unthinking instru- 
ments, often reluctant and remorseful, yet docile 
and compliant by nature. 

Thus the " Kochester knockings," the example 
and prototype of all later so-called spiritualistic 
"phenomena," began merely in a curious childish 
freak, disguised without effort, and which, from 
the first, was encouraged to partly formed under- 
standings by the wonder and intense spirit of 
inquiry it provoked. 

The young operators were carried away by the 
undreamt-of current of enthusiasm and awe in 
which they soon became involved. They felt the 



16 POETIC JUSTICE OF THE EXPOSURE. 

natural need of maintaining with unabating dex- 
terity, that false sense of the miraculous which 
by chance they had called forth. 

Thus they went from one stage to another of 
this queer illusion, and, being compelled by a 
harder and more mature intelligence to repeat 
their part over and over again, became the chief 
means of establishing that injurious belief in 
communications from the spirits of the departed, 
of which such great numbers have become the 
victims. 

Many an older offender against common sense, 
reason and strict morality persists through force 
of circumstance in the pathway he has chosen, 
and does not turn backward, merely because he 
cannot do so without wearing the face of shame. 

From such slight and trivial beginning came 
the great movement — great because of the num- 
ber which it comprised and of the sensation 
which attended its progress— that for more 
than forty years has alternately surprised, puz- 
zled, disgusted and amused the world. 



POETIC JUSTICE OF THE EXPOSURE. 17 

From so little a plant has grown a gigantic 
weed of deceit, corruption and fraud, nurtured 
upon the fattening lust of money, and of the 
flesh. 

What has developed from it is not alone a 
system of so-called communications through a 
puerile code of signals with an unseen world ; 
but, as Dante describes, in his incomparable epic, 
forms of monstrosity which combine a hideous 
human semblance and a loathly animal foulness, 
so this venomous evil has become conglomerate 
in its hateful phases of delusion, and its petty 
sordidness and depravity. 

Thus the Tuscan bard describes the spirit of 
fraud : 

" ' Lo ! the fell monster with the deadly sting ! 
Who passes mountains, breaks through fenced walls 
And firm embattled spears, and with his filth 
Taints all the world ! Thus me my guide addressed, 
And beckon'd him, that he should come to shore, 
Near to the stony causeway's utmost edge. 

"Forthwith that image vile of fraud appear'd, 



18 POETIC JUSTICE OF THE EXPOSURE. 

His head and upper part expos'd on land, 
But laid not on the shore his bestial train. 
His face the semblance of a just man's wore. 
So kind and gracious was its outward cheer ; 
The rest was serpent all ; two shaggy claws 
Reached to the armpits, and the back and breast, 
And either side, were painted o'er with nodes 
And orbits. Colors variegated more 
Nor Turks nor Tartars e'er on cloth of state 
With interchangeable embroidery wove, 
Nor spread Arachne o'er her curious loom. 
As ofttimes a light skiff, moor'd to the shore, 
Stands part in water, part upon the land ; 
Or, as where dwells the greedy German boor, 
The beaver settles watching for his prey ; 
So on the rim, that fenced the sand with rock, 
Sat perched the fiend of evil. In the void 
Glancing, his tail upturn'd its venomous fork, 
With sting like scorpion's armed." 

The world has not seen in all its long pro- 
cession of follies, vagaries, and strange mania, 
one so utterly devoid of a reasonable foundation 
as this. 

Yet none has been more eagorly believed ; and 



POETIC JUSTICE OF THE EXPOSURE.] 19 

this very tendency has evolved into so strong a 
desire to believe that thousands of those who 
have professed to investigate it have done so only 
ostensibly, their eyes, figuratively speaking, 
tightly bandaged, to shut out everything but the 
artificial vision that they were most eager to see. 

It is to be hoped that the world will now form 
its ultimate conclusion upon this flagrant and 
audacious system of humbuggery :— that, regarded 
as a superstition, it ranks even below voudooism 
and fetich -worship, and, as an illusion, below the 
effects produced by the most ordinary magician 
at a country fair. 

Dragged into this life when infants, rescued 
from it for an interval by two men* whose names 
are historical, the one as a hero and explorer, the 
other as a journalist and daily philosopher ; borne 
back to it again by the tide of ill-fortune ; used 
and controlled, by those whose hearts were "dry 
as summer's dust," for their own hateful pur- 
poses; menaced when conscience rebelled and 

* Dr. Kane and Horace Greeley. 



20 POETIC JUSTICE OF THE EXPOSURE. 

suggested retraction and amends ; driven to seek 
momentary oblivion of their present degradation 
in a vice that was the result of their enforced 
public career ; finally, persecuted in a stealthy 
and treacherous way by those who had profited 
most by the fraud that they had set up, because 
it was feared that sooner or later they could no 
longer keep silent and would betray its real ori- 
gin ; seeing their existence slipping away from 
them with nothing but Dead Sea fruit remaining 
to their bitter portion ; feeling more and more the 
need of an atonement to conscience and the opin- 
ion of the world — Margaret and Catherine Fox 
now denounce and anathematize Spiritualism as 
absolutely and utterly false from beginning to 
end ; and they declare their solemn intention to 
devote themselves henceforth to the noble task of 
undoing the great evil which they have done, and 
of leaving no single stone of foundation behind 
them for weak-minded future generations to base 
a futile faith upon. 

In these pages will be found the full and 



POETIC JUSTICE OF TIIE EXPOSURE. 21 

truthful story of Spiritualism, as it was and is, as 
gathered from the lips of both Margaret Fox 
Kane and Catharine Fox Jencken, and verified by 
letters, documents and published data. It is writ- 
ten with their full knowledge and earnest sanc- 
tion. 

The bold fabric of lies built up to sustain the 
claim that the " rappings " in which all spiritual- 
istic so-called phenomena originated were unac- 
countable except on the supernatural hypothesis, 
can no longer be cited to an intelligent mind. The 
elaborate narrative published by the eldest sister, 
Mrs. Ann Leah Fox Underhill, who is now the 
only remaining stay of spiritualistic deception, is 
proven to be false from title-page to finis. 

I have given in the following pages, the real 
lives of Mrs. Kane and Mrs. Jencken, in so far as 
they bear in any important degree upon the 
development of the fraud of Spiritualism. 



n. 

RENUNCIATION. 



CHAPTEE I. 

GOD HAS NOT ORDERED IT. 

The world of "spiritualists" aud 11011 spirit- 
ualists was startled ou the 24th of September, 
1888, by the publication in the New York Herald, 
of an article with the following head-lines : 

"GOD HAS NOT ORDERED IT." 



A Celebrated Medium Says the 
Spirits Never Return. 



CAPTAIN KANE'S WIDOW. 



One of the Fox Sisters Promises an In- 
teresting Exposure of Fraud. 

To many, an article of this kind seemed in a 
degree sensational. Not to those, however, who 

2 [25] 



26 GOD HAS NOT ORDERED IT. 

had previously had some inkling of the secret 
history of Spiritualism, and who for years had 
looked for the day of its inevitable confounding. 

A sudden disclosure like this, by one of the 
(i Mothers of Spiritualism," if the term may be 
usad, suggested a sort of reckless vagary, a 
species of extravagance, due, as might have 
been fancied, to some abnormal condition of the 
mind. 

Yet to those who had had an intimate acquaint- 
ance with Maggie Fox Kane this step had long 
been foreshadowed. As will appear later, no one 
could have imagined the real intensity of moral 
pain that for years she had endured. 

In recent years, both she and her sister, Cath- 
arine Fox Jencken, had been but poorly provided 
with this world's goods. Obliged to depend 
almost wholly on themselves for support, they 
had dropped more and more out of sight, till the 
public at last hardly recognized their names, if 
perchance they appeared in print, as those of the 
principal instruments in the founding of Spirit- 



GOD HAS NOT ORDERED IT. 27 

ualism. For this, there was a reason. It was a 
deep-seated and long increasing disgust with their 
fraudulent profession — the fuller realization to 
their minds, as their knowledge of the world 
grew broader, of the monstrous evil to which, 
innocently at first, they had given birth. So at 
intervals they were filled with despairing despon- 
dency and remorse. Their weaknesses, their self- 
indulgence, their lack of providence for them- 
selves, are largely attributable to these causes. 
It could not be said of them that they were ever 
remarkably selfish, or cold-hearted or calcula- 
ting. Such a character, however, has of right 
been coupled with the name of their elder sister, 
who by reason of the ties of blood and of her 
older experience ought long ago to have led them 
out of the by-ways of imposture, instead of per- 
sistently seeking to shut off their escape from 
this horrible bondage, and to plunge them deeper 
into the mire of guilt and infamy, so that the 
chance of their rising above it, and denouncing it, 
might grow less and less. 



28 GOD HAS NOT ORDERED IT. 

The impulse to set herself right on the record 
of the world, after years of enslavement in the 
hatefnl gyves of charlatanism, must stand to 
Maggie Fox's credit alone. It sprang from her 
own bosom, not from the * inspiration, sugges- 
tion or persuasion of any one else. Eetuming 
from Europe in September, 1888, after a peculiar 
experience, which had convinced her that those 
chiefs of spiritualistic fraud who feared her and 
her sister, because they held the key of the whole 
of the artificial mystery, were bent upon persecut- 
ing them into an abject silence, she at once put 
in execution the resolution wh,ich had been so 
long in process of growth, but' until then had 
never been fully ripened. 

This was to effect the unqualified exposure 
of the false system of Spiritualism. She natu- 
rally chose as a medium for her repentant message 
to the world, that great cosmopolitan journal, the 
New York Herald, which is known in every 
corner of the earth, and is ever ready to perform 
an important service to mankind. Before she 



GOD HAS EOT ORDERED IT. 29 

started on her homeward voyage, she committed 
herself once and for all to this courageous and 
worthy step. 

The disclosures regarding the notorious 
Madam Diss De Barr had offended Mrs. Kane 
more than anything which had occurred in Spirit- 
ualism in a long time, for they presented the 
enforced association of her name and the sim- 
ple, childish origin of the " Kochestei* knock- 
ings," with the gross and revolting frauds which 
had been their outgrowth. So imbued had she 
become, by this time, with the idea that the 
developed system of Spiritualism was something 
to be loathed, as Milton loathed the hideous crea- 
ture who sat by the inner portals of hell, that 
words could not express her utter scorn and 
hatred of this common woman, who posed as an 
agent of sacred communications between the liv- 
ing and the dead. 

The New York Herald of May 27, 1888, con- 
tained this letter, written by Mrs. Margaret Fox 
Kane in London : 



30 GOD HAS NOT ORDERED IT. 

THE CURSE OP SPIRITUALISM. 



Gower Street, Bedford Square, W. C, ) 
London, May 14, 1888. J 

To the Editor of the Herald : 

I read in the Herald of Saturday, May 5, an ac- 
count of the sad misfortune that has befallen my dear 
sister Katie, Mrs. Kate Fox Jencken, and in the article 
it is stated that I am still a resident of New York, which 
is a mistake. I sailed for England on the 22d of March, 
and I presume my absence has added to my darling 
sister's depressed state of mind. The sad news has 
nearly killed me. My sister's two beautiful boys referred 
to are her idols. 

Spiritualism is a curse. God has set His seal against 
it ! I call it a curse, for it is made use of as a covering 
for heartless persons like the Diss De Barrs, and the 
vilest miscreants make use of it to cloak their evil 
doings. Fanatics like Mr. Luther R. Marsh, Mr. John L. 
O'Sullivan, ex-Minister to Portugal, and hundreds equally 
as learned, ignore the "rappings " (which is the only part 
of the phenomena that is worthy of notice) and rush 
madly after the glaring humbugs that flood New York. 
But a harmless " message " that is given through the 
"rappings" is of little account to them ; they want the 
"spirit" to come to them in full form, to walk before 



GOD HAS NOT ORDERED IT. 31 

them, talk to them, to embrace them, and all such non- 
sense, and what is the result ? Like old Judge Edmonds 
and Mr. Soyberfc, of Philadelphia, they become crazed, 
and at the direction of their fraud " mediums'" they are 
induced to part with all their worldly possessions as well 
as their common sense, which God intended they should 
hold sacred. Mr. Marsh's experience is but another 
example of hundreds who have preceded him. 

No matter in what form Spiritualism may be pre- 
sented, it is, has been and always will be a curse and a 
snare to all who meddle with it. No right minded man 
or woman can think otherwise. 

I have found that fanatics are as plentiful among 
" inferior men and women " as they are among the more 
learned. They are all alike. They cannot hold their 
fanaticism in check, and it increases as their years 
increase. All they will ever achieve for their foolish 
fanaticism will be loss of money, softening of the brain 
and a lingering death. 

MARGARET F. KANE. 

This anathema dismayed those who had basely- 
profited by Spiritualism, and it brought a deeper 
shock to the hearts of many who were sincere 
believers. The publication, however, in the 



32 GOD HAS NOT OPwDERED IT. 

Herald, three months later, of an interview with 
Mrs. Kane on her arrival in this city, the striking 
head-lines of which I have cited above, capped 
the climax of consternation. This article is well 
worthy of reproduction. 

The eccentric circles wherein " isms " reign in dis- 
cordant supremacy will be probably as deeply exercised 
over an approaching exposure of the tricks and illusions 
of Spiritualism, as they were over the rude logic of com- 
mon sense and justice which drew aside the thin veil of 
fraud in the case of Madam Diss De Barr, and revealed 
the real nature of her flimsy system of deception in all 
its vulgar absurdity. 

I called yesterday at a modest little house in West 
Forty-fourth street, and was received by a small, mag- 
netic woman of middle age, whose face bears the traces 
of much sorrow and of a world-wide experience. She 
was negligently dressed, and she was not in the calmest 
possible mood. But she knew what she was talking 
about when, in response to my questions, she told a story 
of as strange and fantastic a life as has ever been 
recorded, and declared over and over again her intention 
of balancing the account which the world of humbug- 
loving mortals held against her, by making a clean breast 



GOD HAS NOT ORDERED IT. 33 

of all her former miracles and wonders. In intervals of 
her talk, when she had risen from her chair, and paced 
the room, or had covered her face with her hands and 
almost sobbed with emotion, she would seat herself sud- 
denly at a piano and pour forth fitful floods of wild, 
incoherent melody, which coincided strangely with that 
reminiscent weird ness which, despite its cynical reality, 
still characterized the scene. 

This woman, albeit a notorious career has classed her 
with mountebanks and worse in the minds of reasonable 
beings, had yet by some element or other in her character 
retained a degree of public respect. Perhaps it is 
because months ago she abandoned the art of deception 
and has since to her intimate friends evinced no ordinary 
measure of contempt for all who still pursue it. She 
is known on both sides of the Atlantic, and when in 
London, is entertained by some of the best-to-do of the 
great and comprehensive middle class. 

Circumstances had brought me to this house, and I 
did not at first know her. I soon found, however, that 
this was the most famous of the celebrated trio of witches, 
the Fox sisters, among the earliest spiritualistic mediums 
in this country. She is also the widow of Dr. Elisha 
Kent Kane, the heroic Arctic explorer, who died of the 
effects of his exposure in searching for Sir John Franklin 
and his ill-fated party. Mrs. Margaret Fox Kane has 
2* 



Otfc GOD HAS NOT ORDERED IT. 

lately returned from England for a brief visit here, and 
she purposes in a very short time to deliver just one 
lecture, and no more, which shall shame and dumfound 
all the spiritualistic frauds who have not yet repented 
into poverty or exile of their nebulous ways. She will 
reveal one after another of the methods by which willing 
believers have been so briskly duped and robbed, and 
will herself demonstrate how simple, natural and easy 
are most of those methods. 

Brooding upon the troubles that had been 
brought upon her by Spiritualism and on her 
personal guilt in connection with it, it is hardly 
strange that Mrs. Kane, even when bent upon 
making a sweeping confession of the whole 
imposture, should in intervals of nervous excite- 
ment have turned to the thought of suicide. 

u 'My troubles weighed upon me, 5 she said, 
' and when I was coming over on the Italy, I do 
believe that I should have gone overboard but for 
the Captain and the doctor and some of the 
sailors. They prevented me, and when I landed, 
I could not express to them the gratitude I felt. 



GOD HAS NOT OEDEEED IT. 35 

I had very little English money with me, but 
all of that I distributed to the men.' " 

As Mrs. Kane told of her impulse to commit 
suicide her manner became tragic and she 
clutched her listener's arm. After a moment, 
however, she reverted quietly enough to the 
original subject. 

But she speedily became much excited again, 
as what follows will show. It was but natural : 

" Since you now despise Spiritualism, how was it 
that you were engaged in it so long V s I asked. 

"Another sister of mine," and she coupled the name 
with an injurious adjective, " made me take up with it. 
She's my damnable enemy. I hate her. My God ! I'd 
poison her ! No, I wouldn't, but Til lash her with my 
tongue. She was twenty-three years old the day I was 
born. I was an aunt seven years before I was born. 
Ha ! ha ! 

" Yes, I am going to expose Spiritualism from its 
very foundation. I have had the idea in my head for 
many a year, but I have never come to a determination 
before. I've thought of it day and night. I loath the 



36 GOD HAS NOT OKDERED IT. 

thing I have been. As I used to say to those who 
•wanted me to give a seance, ( You are driving me into 
hell/ Then the next day I would drown my remorse in 
wine. I was too honest to remain a ' medium/ That's 
why I gave up my exhibitions. 

4 'When Spiritualism first began Kate and I were 
little children, and this old woman, my other sister, 
made us her tools. Mother was a silly woman. She was 
a fanatic. I call her that because she was honest. She 
believed in these things. Spiritualism started from just 
nothing. We were but innocent little children. What 
did we know ? Ah, we grew to know too much ! Our 
sister used us in her exhibitions and we made money for 
her. Now she turns upon us because she's the wife of a 
rich man, and she opposes us both wherever she can. 
Oh, I am after her ! You can kill sometimes without 
using weapons, you know. 

" Dr. Kane found me when I was leading this life. 
[The woman's voice trembled just here and she nearly 
broke down.] I was only thirteen when he took me out 
of it and placed me at school. I was educated in Phil- 
adelphia. When I was sixteen years old he returned 
from the Arctic and we were married. Now comes the 
sad, sad tale. He was very ill. The physicians ordered 
him to London, but before he arrived he had a paralytic 
stroke of the heart. Then he was sent back from Lon- 



GOD HAS NOT ORDERED IT. 37 

don and to Havana. Newsboys shouted in the streets of 
New York the news of his critical condition. Oh, my 
God ! it was anguish to my ears ! Mother and I were to 
have joined him in two weeks. He died before we 
arrived. Then I had brain fever. No one but God can 
know what sorrows I have had ! 

" When I recovered I was driven again into Spiritual- 
ism, and I gave exhibitions with my sister Katie. I 
knew, of course, then, that every effect produced by us 
was absolute fraud. Why, I have explored the unknown 
as far as human will can. 1 have gone to the dead so 
that I might get from them some little token. Nothing 
ever came of it — nothing, nothing. I have been in 
graveyards at dead of night, having permission to enter 
from those in charge. I have sat alone on a gravestone, 
that the spirits of those who slept underneath might 
come to me. I have tried to obtain some sign. Not a 
thing ! No, no, the dead shall not return, nor shall 
any that go down into hell. So says the Catholic Bible, 
and so say 1. The spirits will not come back. God has 
not ordered it. 

" You want to know what are the points of my com- 
ing expose ? First the ' Tappings.' " 

Mrs. Kane paused here, and I heard first a rapping 
under the floor near my feet, then under the chair in 
which I was seated, and again under a table on which I 



38 GOD HAS NOT ORDERED IT. 

was leaning. She led me to the door and I heard the 
same sound on the other side of it. Then, when she sat 
on the piano stool, the legs of the instrument reverberated 
more loudly, and the tap, tap, resounded throughout its 
hollow structure. 

« It is all a trick ?" 

" Absolutely. Spirits, is he not easily fooled ?" 

Rap, rap, rap ! 

" I can always get an affirmative answer to that ques- 
tion," she remarked. 

Then I addressed certain suppositions to her. At 
last she said, " Yes, you have hit it. It is, as you say, 
the manner in which the joints of the foot can be used 
without lifting it from the floor. The power of doing 
this can only be acquired by practice begun in early 
youth. One must begin as early as twelve years. Thir- 
teen is rather late. We children, when we were playing 
together, years ago, discovered it, and it was my eldest 
sister who first put the discovery to such an infamous 
use. 

" I call it infamous, for it was." 



THE DISCOMFITED ENEMY. 39 



CHAPTEE II. 

THE DISCOMFITED ENEMY. 

What has gone before is the whole story, in a 
sense. 

The article in the Herald either relates or sug- 
gests it. Indeed, no refutation of it has been 
attempted. If there is one striking negative feat- 
ure in the circumstances surrounding this expos- 
ure of Spiritualism, it is the entire absense of any 
reply from the great body of professional spirit- 
ualists commensurate with the accusation made. 

This confession of Mrs. Margaret Fox Kane 
was to them the handwriting on the wall, the 
"Mene, mene, tekel, upliarsin" of Spiritualism. 

Leah Fox Fish-Brown-Underhill, who has 
published a book of the flimsiest and most absurd 
narrative, intended to be accepted as a proof of 



4:0 THE DISCOMFITED ENEMY. 

Spiritualism, is the one person in all the world 
who could be expected to defend the system from 
this fatal attack, if any defense were possible. 
Eeporters of the daily press would have been 
but too glad to record whatever she might say, 
were it even the veriest drivel, on an issue that 
jeopardized the existence of the brazen and pre- 
tentious "ism" which, as by an obscene spell, 
still enlists the curiosity of a great proportion of 
the world. 

But as Mrs. Underbill's book itself, which I 
shall notice more in detail hereafter, shows to the 
critical mind how futile would be an attempted 
refutation on her part, the public can very readily 
understand the reason of this most careful silence. 
Blunderingly, however, prior to having consulted 
her, Mr. Daniel Underbill, her husband, consented 
to talk upon the subject. The statements hostile 
to Mrs. Kane, to be found in the excerpt here 
given, were, of course, to be expected. Were 
they ever so true, however, they could not in any 



THE DISCOMFITED ENEMY. 41 

way lesson the damning force of her repentant 
avowals : — 

Mr. Daniel Underhill, president of a wealthy insur- 
ance company, whose office is in Wall street, and who is 
the husband of the eldest of the Fox sisters, whom Mar- 
garet declares to be her " damnable enemy," is a 
Spiritualist, but in a moderate sense. Mrs. UnderhilFs 
maiden name was Ann Leah Fox. She was twice 
married before she met her present husband, and she is 
twenty-three years older than Margaret. 

A large part of the public do not realize that Ann 
Leah, Margaret and Cathie Fox were the founders of 
what is specifically known as Spiritualism. The first so- 
called phenomena came to the two youngest girls in 
1848, at Hydesville, in this State, while their sister Leah 
was residing elsewhere. When she heard of what had 
taken place and of the intense public excitement which 
it had created, she joined them, and then began the 
public history of Spiritualism. She took the incipient 
" ism " vigorously in hand, and for a series of years gave 
exhibitions in all the principal cities, which were attended 
by the most eminent men and the most brilliant women 
in the country. 

Of late years Mrs. Underhill has entirely withdrawn 



42 THE DISCOMFITED ENEMY. 

from public participation in spiritualistic exhibitions. 
She is still held, however, in high estimation by all who 
accept supernatural communications, and her reply to 
what her sister Margaret has said regarding the practice 
of fraud, would at this time be interesting. Unfortu- 
nately she is now in the country, and there is no person 
in the city to speak for her excepting her husband. I 
obtained an interview with him yesterday. He was 
reluctant to be brought into the controversy, but, while 
speaking in a most uncomplimentary manner of Margaret 
and denouncing her proposed new departure, did not 
evince any great amount of indignation. 

"I have for years," he began, " helped both Maggie 
and Katie, and my wife has done everything in the world 
for them. "We have furnished apartments for Maggie 
twice. They might both do well if they would only 
keep sober. Maggie can be as nice as you please or as 
vicious as a devil. Several persons have undertaken to 
manage her, but all have failed. Nobody can do any- 
thing with her. The first I knew that she was back in 
the city was through the Herald. 

" I don't think she's in her right mind. I have done 
so much for her and she has behaved so badly in return 
that I have given her up now and will have nothing to 
do with her. She says she will lecture, does she ? Well, 
I don't believe she ever will. She's incapable of it. 



THE DISCOMFITED ENEMY. 43 

'It's a great pity, though, that she should say such 
things about Spiritualism, because of the odium which 
will result from it. But it isn't the first time she has 
said that she would declare against Spiritualism. She 
has had such spells before. It is astonishing to me that 
people have stuck to her and Katie as they have. It is 
all bosh about revealing the manner of producing the 
raps. I don't believe she can do it. I don't believe she 
knows how they are produced, except that it is done by 
an occult agency. Of course, there are frauds in Spirit- 
ualism. Mme. Diss De Barr was one of them. I don't 
believe much in materialization, but I've seen some real 
manifestations. They were in my own house. Nearly all 
my spiritualistic experience has been in my own house, 
and these sisters were the mediums. 

" Of course Maggie's statement will be something of 
a shock to spiritualists the world over, because they 
regard her and her sisters as the founders of their belief. 
In my opinion she is not accountable for what she says." 

Mrs. Underhill remained quietly in the coun- 
try many weeks after the expose, safe from the 
keen inquisition of reporters. 

The notorious " mediums" in New York who 
were approached on the subject, were all exces- 



4:4 THE DISCOMFITED ENEMY. 

sively guarded in their comments upon the step 
taken by Mrs. Kane, yet they admitted her per- 
sonal importance as an originator of Spiritualism. 
Mrs. E. A. Wells, whose fraudulent exhibitions 
have had a certain success, expressed herself as 
much shocked at the determination of Mrs. Kane ; 
" 'but,' she added to the reporter, with seem- 
ing naivete, f you don't believe she will do it, do 
you V " 

The account from which I am quoting, con- 
tinues as follows : 

"I sought the presence of Mrs. E. A. Wells, a medium 
of great celebrity, whose abode is not far from Adelphi 
Hall, where spiritualists congregate on Sunday. Mrs. 
"Wells expressed herself as shocked at the determination 
of Mrs. Margaret Fox Kane, " but," she added, with 
seeming naivete, " you don't believe she will do it, do 
you ?" 

" How have you regarded Mrs. Kane heretofore, 
Mrs. Wells r 

"Why, with a good deal of respect as one of the first 
to get messages from the unseen world. The Fox sisters 
have a great name. I have no idea, though, if she really 



THE DISCOMFITED ENEMY. 45 

intends to do what she says she will, that she's in her 
right senses." 

Another " medium," who has a wealthy 
clientele, and who gives only private seances, 
whence all unfriendly influences are rigorously 
excluded, did not desire to appear in print, as she 
told her visitor, since it would look like "bad 
form " to those who came to her for supernatural 
enlightenment. 

She was asked, however, if she held the Fox sisters in 
much esteem as the pioneers of Spiritualism. She said 
she did, but personally knew nothing of them. 

When told about the threatened exposure she ex- 
pressed very great surprise, and declared that it would 
be a deep mortification to believers in Spiritualism. 

"I don't believe she can expose any fraud. Bat if 
fraud exists, why, then, I say let it be exposed; the 
sooner the better. There's no fraud about me, that's 
very certain, and I've some of the very best people in 
New York to come here." 

" I'll tell you what ! I have heard that the Fox sis- 
ters are dreadfully addicted to drink. I don't know how 
far it is true, but I wouldn't believe anything she might 



46 THE DISCOMFITED ENEMY. 

say in the way of exposure. May be she's out of money 
and thinks the spiritualists ought to do something for 
her. I shouldn't wonder.'' 

"Now, if you'll come up here some time, and if you'll 
give me a fair report, I shall be glad to show you how I 
can materialize." 

I thought there was a good deal of material about her 
already, and so I thanked her. 

At their public gatherings in Adelphi Hall, 
New York, now most meagerly attended, the 
spiritualists, just after the initial expose in the 
Her aid ', refrained very wisely from taking up the 
gauntlet of truth thrown down by their chief 
apostle, Mrs. Margaret Fox Kane. In an inter- 
view, however, which was had by a reporter with 
Mr. Henry J. Newton, the President of the First 
Spiritual Society of New York, the latter 
indulged in a number of emphatic statements 
regarding the " manifestations " produced by the 
" Fox Sisters," all of which rested upon his own 
veracity only. The spirit of what he said may be 
easily gleaned from this passage : 



THE DISCOMFITED ENEMY. 47 

"I had supposed all along/' lie said, "that Mrs. Kane 
was still in Europe, and that she would never return to 
this country. I even heard at the time when Katie, her 
sister, was sent abroad, that Maggie was in Eome, in 
company with a well known gentleman. I am very 
much surprised to know that she is in this city, and 
more surprised that she threatens to make such silly 
pretended revelations as you say she proposes. They can 
only be revelations in name. She cannot reveal any- 
thing that can injure the spiritualist cause or that will 
weaken in any one's mind the truth of what we teach. 

" I have been absent in the country and have not read 
all that the Herald has published on this matter. I have 
read enough, however, to show me how utterly absurd 
and ridiculous her position is. 

"The idea of claiming that unseen ' rappings' can be 
produced with joints of the feet ! If she says this, even 
with regard to her own manifestations, she lies ! I and 
many other men of truth and position have witnessed the 
manifestations of herself and her sisters many times 
under circumstances in which it was absolutely impossible 
for there to have been the least fraud. 

" Nothing that she could say in that regard would in 
the least change my opinion, nor would it that of any one 
else who has become profoundly convinced that there is 
an occult influence connecting us with an invisible world. 



48 THE DISCOMFITED ENEMY. 

I have seen Margaret Fox Kane herself, when lying on a 
bed of sickress and unable to rise, produce Wrappings' in 
various parts of the room in which she was, and upon the 
ceilings, doors and windows several feet away from her. 
I have seen her produce the same effects when too drunk 
to realize what she was doing.-" 

On the 25th of September, 1888, the following, 
which was published in the New York Herald, 
expressed very tersely the situation among the 
spiritualists, who had by that time partly 
recovered from the first effect of the blow : 

Recrimination against the two younger Fox sisters, 
Margaret and Katie, has begun with characteristic 
violence, and many unlovely truths are betrayed which 
do not alter the essential significance of the former's 
denunciation of spiritualistic fraud. Several of the 
mediums said that they could hardly believe their eyes 
when they read of Mrs. Margaret Fox Kane's deter- 
mination, and they declared almost unanimously that; 
" she would not do it if she were in her senses." They 
accuse her of excessive indulgence in drink and hint that 
she is not responsible for what she says. It appears, 
however, that in private, on many occasions, but never 



THE DISCOMFITED ENEMY. 49 

before in public, she has stated that Spiritualism, was a 
tissue of fraud, and that some day she would prove the 
charge to the world. She has during the last few months 
given many seances in London, but always disclaimed 
any personal supernatural connection in producing the 
effects at which others wondered. With a number of 
rich patrons, among them Mr. H. Wedgewood, of Caven- 
dish Square, she proceeded to a certain point in the 
process of delusion and then frankly undeceived them, 
convincing them of the ease with which they could be 
practiced upon. 

Prior to this, the following had been pub- 
lished : 

As Mrs. Kane's sincerity in making her proposed 
exposures is questioned by her enemies, the following 
brief note from a well known English spiritualist is of 
interest : 



" 31 Queen; Anne Street, Cavendish Square, ) 
"London, W., July 19, 1888. j 

" Dear Mrs. Kane : I am not so much surprised 

as I might be at what you have revealed to me if I had 

not already been led to believe that many spiritualistic 

mediums practice upon the credulous. 



50 THE DISCOMFITED ENEMY. 

" The illusion, however, was perfect while it lasted. 
( ' You do well to expose these infamous frauds, and I 
thank you for having enlightened me. 
; \ " Sincerely yours, 

"H. WEDGEWOOD." 

And later Mrs. Kane, in outlining her pro- 
posed public lecture, said : 

" I am going to expose the very root of corruption in 
this spiritualistic ulcer. You talk about Mormonism ! 
Do you know that there is something behind the shadowy 
mask of Spiritualism that the public can hardly guess 
at ? I am stating now what I know, not because I 
actually participated in it, for I would never be a party 
to such promiscuous nastiness, but because I had plenty 
of opportunity, as you may imagine, of verifying it. 
Under the name of this dreadful, this horrible hypocrisy 
— Spiritualism — everything that is improper, bad and 
immoral is practiced. They go even so far as to have 
what they call ' spiritual children V They pretend *to 
something like the immaculate conception ! Could any- 
thing be more blasphemous, more disgusting, more thinly 
deceptive than that ? In London I went in disguise to 



THE DISCOMFITED ENEMY. 51 

a quiet seance at the house of a wealthy man, and I saw 
a so-called materialization. The effect was produced 
with the aid of luminous paper, the lustre of which was 
reflected upon the operator. The figure thus displayed 
was that of a woman — was virtually nude, being envel- 
oped in transparent gauze, the face alone being concealed. 
This was one of those seances to which the privileged 
non-believing friends of believing spiritualists could have 
access. But there are other seances, where none but the 
most tried and trusted are admitted, and where there 
are shameless goings on that vie with the secret Saturn- 
alia of the Romans. I could not describe these things to 
you, because I would not." 

Thus, the only one of the " Fox Sisters " who 
still adhered to the imposture practiced for over 
forty years, and the only spiritualist who could 
deny the statements of Margaret Fox Kane with 
anything approaching to authority, found her 
safest and most fitting defense in the kindly shel- 
ter of silence. 

This quasi-confession was not needed to com- 
plete the conviction in intelligent minds that 



52 THE DISCOMFITED ENEMY. 

Spiritualism was, in its inception, and is now, a 
fraud and a lie. But the significance of the nega- 
tive circumstance is none the less worthy of 
note. 






A SECOND BLOW. 53 



CHAPTER III. 

A SECOND BLOW. 

Barely had the professional spiritualists a 
breathing-spell— after the shock of Mrs. Kane's 
confession — when a new blow fell upon them. 

Mrs. Catherine Fox Jencken arrived from 
Europe, and though ignorant until landing, of 
the grave step her sister Margaret had taken, at 
once announced her intention of joining and sus- 
taining her in the complete exposure of Spiritual- 
ism in all its phases of deception and hypocrisy. 

This news staggered the spiritualistic world. 

And now it but remains for the other of the 
three " Fox Sisters " to see the hopeless folly of 
continued imposture, and to add her confession 
to the historical record of the dissipation of this 
unholy fraud. That she will ever do this, how- 



54 ' A SECOND BLOW. 

ever, those who are aware that to her malevolent 
will was due the first evil growth and the wide 
extension of Spiritualism, cannot easily bring 
themselves to believe. 

The following account of Mrs. Jencken's 
arrival in New York and of her determination to 
add her testimony to that of her sister Margaret 
against the fraud of Spiritualism, was published 
on the 10th of October, 1888, and is of sufficient 
interest to excuse my quoting it here at large : 

AND KATY FOX NOW. 



The Youngest of the Mediumistic Pio- 
neers Will " Give the Snap Away." 



SHE AEEIVES FEOM EUEOPE. 






Spiritualism a Humbugfrom Beginning 
to End — Alleged Immoralities. 

Katie Fox Jencken arrived yesterday from England 
on the Persian Monarch and she intends to co-operate 



A SECOND BLOW. 55 

with her sister — Margaret Fox Kane — in her proposed 
expose of the fraudulent methods of so-called Spiritual- 
ism. 

Mrs. Jeneken's coming was unexpected to her sister, 
and it will surprise the enemies of both. 

The blow to Spiritualism which Maggie Fox struck 
not long ago, caused a good deal more of consternation 
than spiritualists generally have cared to confess. There 
is ample reason for stating that underneath a plausible 
surface of enforced calm there have been the hurried 
exchange of forbodings and doubtings, and many con- 
sultations and goings to and fro. It is known that an 
overture was made to Maggie Fox suggestive of a money 
consideration for her silence, and that she rejected it 
with much indignation. 

Mrs. Jencken walked into the parlor where Mrs. Kane 
was sitting about five o'clock yesterday, and the sisters at 
once fell on each other's necks, in an ecstasy of affection 
and delight at being together once again. Mrs. Kane 
had but just been talking to me about her projected lec- 
ture on ' ' The Curse of Spiritualism," and Mrs. Jencken, 
who had heard nothing of the proposed expose, except 
as it was casually rumored in her ear at the steamship 
dock, promptly gave her acquiescence to it as soon as she 
understood the situation. 

" I do not care a fig for Spiritualism," she said, 



56 A SECOND BLOW. 

"except so far as the good will of its adherents may 
affect the future of my boys. They are all I have in this 
life,, and I live or die for them/' 

Mrs. Jencken looks a far different person than she 
was when in deep trouble in this city and when she had 
to. do with the rather unsympathetic measures of the 
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. !No 
matron could bear a more placid and comely expression, 
and she declares with heartfelt earnestness that she is 
done forever with her once-besetting vice. 

"Mrs. Jencken, are you willing to join with your 
sister in exposing the true modus operandi of Spiritual- 
ism ?" I asked. 

" I care nothing for Spiritualism," was her reply. 
"So far as I am concerned I am done with it. I will 
say this, I regard it as one of the very greatest curses 
that the world has ever known. If I knew those power- 
ful spiritualists who have done their utmost to harm me 
in the past could not do so in the future, I would not 
hesitate a moment to expose it. The worst of them all 
is my eldest sister, Leah, the wife of Daniel Underhill. 
I think she was the one who caused my arrest last spring, 
and the bringing of the preposterous charge against me 
that I was cruel to my children and neglectful of them. 
I don't know why it is, she has always been jealous of 



A SECOND BLOW. 57 

Maggie and me ; I suppose because we could do things 
in Spiritualism that she couldn't." 

"Why don't you come squarely out, then, with the 
truth, and make the public your friends ? You needn't 
fear any persecution if you do that." 

" "Well, if my sister's health were only fully restored 
and I knew she was fully herself I would certainly join 
her in showing Spiritualism to be what it really is. I 
want to be sure of that, however. I want the thing done 
properly when it is clone." 

" Then you will not deny that what she has said of 
Spiritualism is true ?" 

" I will not deny it. Spiritualism is a humbug from 
beginning to end. It is the greatest humbug of the 
century. I don't know whether she has told you this, 
but Maggie and I started it as very little children, too 
young, too innocent, to know what we w T ere doing. Our 
sister Leah was twenty-three years older than either of 
us. "We got started in the way of deception, and being 
encouraged in it, we went on, of course. Others, old 
enough to have been ashamed of the infamy, took us out 
into the world. My sister Leah has published a book 
called ' The Missing Link of Spiritualism.' It professes 
to give the true history of this movement, so far as 
it originated with us. Now, there's nothing but false- 
hood in that book from beginning to end, excepting the 



58 THE SECOND BLOW. 

fact that Horace Greeley educated me. The rest is noth- 
ing but a string of lies." 

" And about the manifestations at Hydesville in 1848 
and the finding of bones in the cellar and so on ?" 

"All humbuggery, every bit of it." 

" And yet Maggie and I are the founders of Spiritual- 
ism \" concluded Mrs. Jencken. 

On the next day Mrs. Jencken made the state- 
ment which appears in the following : 

Mrs. Jencken was asked about the alleged spirit 
manifestations which have taken place in Carlyle's old 
home at Chelsea, London, where she has lately resided. 
The English papers have been filled with stories, more 
or less sceptical, regarding these queer occurrences. Mrs. 
Jencken said: "All that took place there of that 
nature is utterly false. I haven't the slightest idea that 
the noises which we heard in the house had any connec- 
tion with Carlyle's spirit. I certainly know that every 
so-called manifestation produced through me in London 
or anywhere else was a fraud. Many a time have I wept 
because when I was young and innocent I was brought 
into such a life. The time has now come for Maggie 
and I to set ourselves right before the world. Nobody 



THE SECOND BLOW. 59 

knows at what moment either of us might betaken away. 
We ought not to leave this base fabric of deceit behind 
us unexposed." 

As may be seen, nothing could be stronger 
than the language employed in these inter- 
views by both of the repentant sisters, in 
denouncing their former adhesion to a system of 
humbug and hypocrisy. 



60 THE HAND OP THE PERSECUTOR. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE HAND OF THE PERSECUTOR 

The public had every reason to feel a deep 
sympathy with the two younger Fox sisters in 
the courageous attitude which they had taken. 

The deadliest hatred is always to be feared, by 
those who abandon a faith or a system, from 
those who still adhere to it. 

Think you, if Mahomet had turned about, 
forty years after the Hegira, and had boldly 
anathematized the religion he had established, he 
might not have been reviled and persecuted, even 
by those in whom he had first inculcated his 
bastard faith? 

Who can doubt this who knows human 
nature ? 

Even the lies of an impostor rebel against 



THE HAND OF THE PERSECUTOR. 61 

him, when, with a repentant word, he would 
damn them again to all eternity. 

Mrs. Jencken had ample reason to fear that 
the disclosures which had been made by her and 
her sister would redouble the hostile zeal of those 
who before had persecuted her. In the first 
account which had been published of her return 
to this country, it was not stated that her two 
boys had accompanied her. In fact, however, 
they had. 

The pressure brought to bear to induce her to 
retract her denunciation of Spiritualism, and the 
ground of her fear for the safety of her children, 
are well set forth in the following, which appeared 
on October 11th, 1888 : 



62 THE HAND OF THE PERSECUTOR. 



FEARING THEIR ENEMIES. 



THE JENCKEN BOYS WERE HERE, BUT ARE SENT AW AT. 

There are signs of gathering thunder all around the 
spirtualistic sky. 

A leading spiritualist, a lawyer, who had read the 
Herald's recent articles on the subject, demanded of 
Mrs. Katy Fox Jencken, immediately upon her arrival in 
New York on Tuesday, that she refuse to support her 
sister Maggie in her expose of mediumistic fraud, and, 
to use his own words, that she " throw herself upon the 
sympathy of the spiritualists." 

This proposition she emphatically rejected and 
declared that she had done forever with Spiritualism and 
spiritualists. She firmly believes that leading men and 
women among the latter, particularly her eldest sister 
Leah, are her secret persecutors, and that it was due to 
their animus that she was arrested last spring and 
deprived of her two boys, to whom she is immeasurably 
devoted. 

There is much to sustain this charge, and the infer- 
ence that this mysterious persecution, of which, as she 
alleges, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to 
Children was only the intrument, was inspired by 



THE HAND OF THE PERSECUTOR. 63 

the fear that she and Mrs. Kane, having long been 
exploited for the financial benefit of others, might do 
the very thing they are doing now — betray the secrets of 
deception, which have from the beginning of the 
spiritualistic movement been so well guarded. 

As was said in the Herald yesterday, Mrs. Jencken 
knew nothing of the course which her sister Maggie had 
taken until she landed on the wharf of the Monarch line 
company. The Herald did not state yesterday that Mrs. 
Jencken was accompanied by her two boys, whom the 
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children made 
such great efforts to keep apart from their mother in 
last May. As soon as she heard the news of Maggie's 
disclosures from a friend who met her at the steamer, she 
was overcome with fear lest, being now aware of the 
means that had been employed to secure their release and 
her own, the society would again attempt to deprive her 
of her children. She was advised by a lawyer who knew 
the real source of the hostility to her and the motives 
that prompted it, to send them back at once to England. 
The boys declared that they did not want to fall into the 
hands of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to 
Children again. Both of them are now strapping big 
fellows for their age, and are able and willing to earn their 
own living. One is fourteen years old and the other will 
be soon sixteen. But for a misunderstanding as to their 



64: THE HAND OF THE PERSECUTOR. 

ages on the part of the police justice last spring there 
would never have been any question of retaining them in 
the custody of Mr. G-erry's over-zealous myrmidons. 

Mrs. Jencken's apprehensions, however, were not to 
be quieted, and early in the morning she bundled off the 
two lads [and they are now safely beyond the jurisdiction 
of the dreaded society of which Mr. E. T. Gerry is the 
chief].* 

"This shows," said a gentleman yesterday, <( how far 
certain wealthy spiritualists are powerful to inspire a 
kind of terrorism even in New York city among those 
who have left their ranks." 

"Now that my boys are out of danger," said Mrs. 
Jencken, "I will stand by my sister Maggie and go to 
the very fullest length of any exposure that she may 
make. We have been the tools and victims of others 
long enough. I approve and I affirm all that she has 
said about the immoral practices hidden under the 
ridiculous cloak of Spiritualism. The whole thing is 
damnable, and it should long ago have been trampled 
out as one would trample out the life of a serpent." 

* It was erroneously stated that the boys were immediately 
sent back to Europe. 



SOLEMN ABJURATION. 65 



CHAPTER V. 



SOLEMN ABJURATION. 



The news thab Mrs. Margaret Fox Kane and 
Mrs. Catherine Fox Jencken had renounced and 
exposed Spiritualism, flew from one end of the 
country to the other, and caused excitement 
among spiritualists and non-spiritualists. Every 
newspaper in every city of the United States, and 
many in Europe, repeated the story published in 
New York. 

The general opinion everywhere, where the 
wish was not the opposite, was that Spiritualism 
as such had received its death-blow. 

Letters began to pour in upon Mrs. Kane 
which were strongly significant of the effect of 
her action. Many of them were written by per- 
sons who had been believers from the very first 



66 SOLEMN ABJURATION. 

of the public exhibitions of the "rappings," and 
who had based their whole faith on the truth and 
veritable inspiration of the " Fox Sisters. " It was 
almost pitiable to witness the honest-hearted dis- 
tress of people of this sort, who now saw the 
fondest illusion of their lives dissolve before their 
eyes ; their dearest, assured hope of an invisible 
world ruthlessly torn from them. 

The anger of those who now anathematized 
the founders of the spiritualistic faith, and 
declared that all that they could now say in way 
of recantation was utterly false, while all that 
they had formerly said or performed as miraculous 
proof, was, of course, as true as gospel, or as the 
fact that the sun shines, was quite as ridiculous as 
the other sentiment was worthy of sympathy. 

It was natural that those who had fed their 
baser passions upon Spiritualism — as the harpy 
upon carrion — should resort to the vilest methods 
of attacking Mrs. Kane, and in doing so should 
shelter themselves behind the cowardly refuge of 
anonymity. 



SOLEMN ABJURATION". 67 

A single communication from one of those 
who thus set the gauge for our estimate of spirit- 
ualistic hypocrisy, will suffice to complete the 
reader's impression regarding them. It was 
written on a postal card and unsigned, and the 
italics and other literary peculiarities are wholly 
those of the person who wrote it: 

" Mrs. Kane. Your anticipated action Thursday 
night reminds me very forcibly of several lines of 
1 Beautiful snow ' only your Course is even more 
despicable and your rank in the history of the 
present day will be on a par with Benedict arnold 
In ' Beautiful Snow ' we find ' Selling her soul to 
whoever would buy ' &c. you are going to sell 
your soul to an ignorant public by pretending to 
Expose what you very well Know cannot be 
Exposed by any man, woman or child dwelling 
in the Mortal sphere of Life— shame on you. 
but you will soon meet your reward in other 
spheres and suffer for your wickedness." 

It is hard to determine whether the above 
communication emanated from a professional 



68 SOLEMN ABJURATION. 

spiritualist of the mercenary type or from one 
who finds his or her profit of self -gratification in the 
licentious tendencies and opportunities of private 
spiritualistic intercourse. In any event, it bears 
the stamp of ignorant selfishness and narrow 
vulgarity. 

It is with a degree of pleasure that one 
may turn to letters which were written by the 
sincere disciples of the "Fox Sisters," and which 
breathe a deep anxiety for the fate of that fan- 
tastic creed in which they have so much delighted. 

The reader has but to think for an instant of 
the actual meaning of this long-deferred expose 
to these persons. They had greedily fed their 
souls upon the delusion that they had held inter- 
course with the spirits of their dear departed. 
The supposed messages which they had received 
seemed a sure earnest of that union with those 
they loved on earth for which the true heart most 
longs. In view of this expectation and in the 
light of this exposure of its utter fallacy — so far as 
any material evidence is concerned— it is most 



SOLEMN ABJURATION. 69 

difficult to find adequate terms with which to 
characterize the work of those who still persist in 
contributing to a delusion which has numbered 
so many victims. 

Here is a letter from a resident of Southern 
California, enclosing a clipping from a newspaper 
containing Mrs. Kane's renunciation of Spirit- 
ualism: 

"Buena Park, Los Angeles Co., Cal., 
Sept. 29, A. D. 1888. 
"Mrs. Margaret Fox Kane, 
" Dear Madam : 
"I have just read the enclosed item, taken 
from one of our L03 Angeles city papers. Please 
let me know if the statements therein contained 
are true, and you will greatly oblige, 

" Yours for truth, 

"T. J. House." 

The following was written by one of the best 
known early settlers of San Francisco, a man 



TO SOLEMN ABJURATION. 

whose example and absolute faith have influenced 
hundreds, probably, to embrace Spiritualism : 

"San Francisco, Cal., Oct. 2, 18S8. 
"Mrs. Margaret Fox Kane, 
"Dear Madam : 
"I inclose a cutting from one of our local 
papers, purporting to be an interview with you in 
regard to the subject of Spiritualism. I have 
taken the liberty to inquire of you if the state- 
ments therein contained are true. 

" I have been a believer in the phenomena 
from its first inception through you and your 
sister, believing it to be true since that time. 

"I am now eighty-one years old and have but 
a short time, of course, to remain in this world, 
and I feel great anxiety to know through you if 
I have been deceived all this time in a matter of 
vital interest to us all. 

" Will you greatly oblige me with an answer ? 
"Very respectfully yours, 

"E. F. Bunnell. 
"No. 319 Kearny St." 



SOLEMN ABJURATION. 71 

And here is a communication which is signed 
by what is evidently only a part of the writer's 
name, but which carries with it in every line the 
absolute impress of truth and of a deep and 
pathetic earnestness : 

" Boston, Mass., Oct. 15, 1888. 
" Mrs. Margaret Fox Kane, 
"Dear Madam : 

" Hundreds of thousands have believed 
through you and you alone. Hundreds of thous- 
ands eagerly ask you whether all the glorious 
light that they fancied you have given them, was 
but the false flicker of a common dip-candle of 
fraud. 

"If, as you say, you were forced to pursue 
this imposture from childhood, I can forgive you, 
and I am sure that God will ; for he turns not 
back the truly repentant. I will not upbraid you. 
I am sure you have suffered as much as any 
penalty, human or divine, could cause you to 
suffer. The disclosures that you make take from 



72 SOLEMN ABJURATION. 

me all that I cherished most. There is nothing 
left for me now but to hope for the reality of that 
repose which death promises us. 

"It is perhaps better that the delusion should 
be at last swept away by one single word, and 
that word 'fraud.' 

"I know that the pursuit of this shadowy 
belief has wrought upon my brain and that I am 
no longer my old self. Money I have spent in 
thousands and thousands of dollars within a few 
short years to propitiate the ' mediumistic ' intelli- 
gence. It is true that never once have I received 
a message or the token of a word that did not 
leave a still unsatisfied longing in my heart, a 
feeling that it was not really my loved one after 
all, who was speaking to me, or if it was my 
loved one, that he was changed, that I hardly 
knew him and that he hardly knew me. Oh ! 
how I have hated the thought that used to come 
to me sometimes, in spite of myself, that ifc was 
not really he. But that must have been the true 
intuition. It is better that the delusion is past, 



SOLEMN ABJURATION. 73 

after all, for had I kept on in that way, I am sure 
I should have gone mad. The constant seeking, 
the frequent pretended response, its unsatisfying 
meaning, the sense of distance and change 
between me and my loved one — oh ! it has been 
horrible, horrible ! 

"He who is dying of thirst and has the sweet 
cup ever snatched from his lips, just as the first 
drop touches them — he alone can know what in 
actual things is the similitude of this spiritualistic 
torture. 

" God bless you, for I think that you now 
speak the truth. You have my forgiveness at 
least, and I believe that thousands of others will 
forgive you, for the atonement made in season 
wipes out much of the stain of the early sin. 

"Yours sincerely, 

"Anna Suzanne." 

To these letters and to hundreds of others 
which Mrs. Kane and her sister Mrs. Jencken 
have received, this volume is their response. 



74 SOLEMN ABJLTEATION. 

But besides this, they have appeared in public 
on the platform, as an earnest of their present 
sincerity, and will probably continue so to appear 
in various parts of this country and Europe. 

On the 21st of October, 1888, Mrs. Margaret 
Fox Kane first fulfilled her intention of publicly 
denouncing, with her own lips, Spiritualism and 
its attendant trickery. She appeared at the 
Academy of Music in New York before a large 
and distinguished audience, and without reserva- 
tion demonstrated the falsity of all that she had 
done in the past in the guise of spiritualistic 
" mediumship." 

The ordeal was a severe one: The great nerv- 
ous strain under which she had labored rendered 
her mind highly excitable, and the large number 
of spiritualists in the house tried to create a dis- 
turbance, or a traitorous diversion which would 
break the force of her renunciation. In this they 
utterly failed, however, thanks to the superior 
character of a majority of her auditors. 



SOLEMN ABJUEATION. 75 

The moral effect of the exposure could not 
have been greater. 

Mrs. Kane stood before the footlights tremb- 
ling with intense feeling, and made the following 
most solemn abjuration of Spiritualism, while 
Mrs. Catharine Fox Jencken sat in a neighboring 
box and gave assent by her presence to all that 
she said : 

"That I have been chiefly instrumental in 
prepetrating the fraud of Spiritualism upon a too 
confiding public, most of you doubtless know. 

" The greatest sorrow of my life has been that 
this is true, and though it has come late in my 
day, I am now prepared to tell the truth, the 
whole truth and nothing but the truth, — so help 
me God ! 

"There are probably many here who will 
scorn me for the decepMon I have practiced, yet 
did they know the true history of my unhappy 
past, the living agony and shame that it has 
been to me, they would pity, not reproach. 

"The imposition which 1 have so long main- 



76 SOLEMN ABJURATION. 

tained began in ray early childhood, when, with 
character and mind still unformed, I was unable 
to distinguish between right and wrong. 

" I repented it in my maturity. I have lived 
through years of silence, through intimidation, 
scorn and bitter adversity, concealing as best I 
might, the consciousness of my guilt. Now, 
thanks to God and my awakened conscience, I 
am at last able to reveal the fatal truth, the exact 
truth of this hideous fraud which has withered so 
many hearts and has blighted so many hopeful 
lives. 

"I am here to-night as one of the founders of 
Spiritualism, to denounce it as an absolute false- 
hood from beginning to end, as the flimsiest of 
superstitions, the most wicked blasphemy known 
to the world. 

"I ask only your kind attention and forgive- 
ness, and as I may prove myself worthy by the 
step I am now taking, may you extend to me your 
helping hands and sustain me in the better path 
I have chosen." 



SOLEMN ABJURATION. 77 

The demonstration of the method by which 
the "rappings" were produced was a perfect suc- 
cess, as is best shown by the following succinct 
account, which formed a part of the article on the 
subject published by the New York World on the 
following morning : 

A plain wooden stool or table, resting upon four 
short legs, and having the properties of a sounding board, 
was placed in front of her. Removing her shoe, she 
placed her right foot upon this table. The entire house 
became breathlessly still, and was rewarded by a number 
of little short, sharp raps — those mysterious sounds 
which have for more than forty years frightened and 
bewildered hundreds of thousands of people in this 
country and Europe. A committee, consisting of three 
physicians taken from the audience, then ascended to 
the stage, and having made an examination of her foot 
during the progress of the " rappings," unhesitatingly 
agreed that the sounds were made by the action of the 
first joint of her large toe. 

Only the most hopelessly prejudiced and bigoted 
fanatics of Spiritualism could withstand the irresistable 
force of this common-place explanation and exhibition of 
how " spirit rappings " are produced. The demonstra- 



78 SOLEMN ABJURATION. 

tion was perfect and complete, and if "spirit rappings" 
find any credence in this community hereafter, it would 
seem a wise precaution on the part of the authorities to 
begin the enlargement of the State's insane asylums 
without any delay. 



III. 

HISTORY. 



CHAPTER VI. 



ORIGIN OF THE FRAUD. 



There are spiritualists who pretend that 
so-called " spirit rappings" originated long before 
the Hydesville disturbances took place. These 
declarations, however, are of no value as actual 
evidence. 

In any event, there is no claim that in their 
cause and general character these manifestations, 
so-called, were very different from similar ones 
of the present day. 

The "rappings" produced by the " Fox Sis- 
ters " are certainly the first of which there is an 
authentic account. They began in a little rustic 
cottage at a place called Hydesville, in the town 
of Arcadia, near Newark, Wayne County, New 

4* [81] 



82 ORIGIN OF THE FRAUD. 

York. Here John D. Fox and his wife Margaret 
dwelt with their two daughters, Margaret and 
Catherine. Two other children, Ann Leah and 
David S., lived elsewhere. There was sometimes 
a fifth member of the household, also a child. 
This was Elizabeth Fish, the daughter of Leah, 
and therefore the niece of Margaret and Cathe- 
rine. She was seven years older than the elder of 
the two latter. 

The elder Fox and his wife had not been 
always united since their marriage. They were 
separated for a number of years. The three 
older children, Ann Leah, Maria and David S., 
were conceived before this separation took place, 
and Margaret and Catherine afterwards. The 
two broods had distinctive characteristics. The 
father, in the interval, is said to have become 
addicted to intemperate habits. The taint of 
heredity may excuse much in the younger gene- 
ration that sprang from a weakness of will-power 
and made them the too easy victims of colder and 
more mercenary natures. To many it is well 



ORIGIN OF THE FRAUD. 83 

known that they are still incapable of guarding 
their interests in a business way, and that they 
have always been too largely at the mercy of any 
one who could acquire an influence over them. 

Margaretta, or Margaret, Fox, as she always 
signs herself, was born in the year 1840, and 
Catherine Fox a year and a half later. The eldest 
sister Leah was born twenty -three years before 
the former. The little girls, one eight years old 
and the other six and a half, had rarely seen this 
sister prior to the beginning of the spiritualistic 
movement. She knew nothing of it until the 
popular excitement over the "rappings" had 
almost reached its climax. Very early in life she 
had married a man named Fish, who had deserted 
her, and she was supporting herself at this time 
in the city of Eoch ester by teaching the rudi- 
ments of music. David S. Fox, son of John 
and Margaret Fox, lived about two miles from 
the home of his father in Arcadia. 

Maggie and Katie Fox were as full of petty 
devilment as any two children of their age ever 



84: ORIGIN OF THE FRAUD. 

were. They delighted to tease their excellent old 
mother, who by all who knew her is described as 
simple, gentle and true-hearted. In their antics, 
they would resort to all sorts of ingenious devices, 
and bed-time witnessed almost invariably the 
gayest of larks. One of their frequent amuse- 
ments was to plague their niece, Elizabeth, who 
slept in the same bed with them, by kicking and 
tickling her, and by frightening her at almost any 
hour of the night out of sound sleep. 

Their riotous fancy soon hit upon the plan of 
bobbing apples up and down on the floor in their 
bedchamber, as a means of scaring Elizabeth and 
of puzzling their mother without much risk of 
detection. They tied strings to the stems of the 
apples, and thus let them hang down beside the 
bed. The noise of dropping them more or less 
quickly upon the floor resembled almost anything 
that the imagination chose to liken it to, from 
raps on the front door to slippered foot-falls on 
the narrow stairway. Whenever a search was 
made for the cause of the noises, the apples were 



ORIGIN OF THE FRAUD. 85 

easily hauled up into the bed and hidden in the 
bedclothes, where no one would think of looking 
for them, at least at that stage of the investiga- 
tion. 

The plan had everything in it to charm a 
juvenile mischief-maker. It succeeded admir- 
ably. It was not till the wonder which was 
caused by these strange "knockings" had 
extended beyond the humble Fox household, that 
the suggestion of any other means of affording to 
that growing feeling its daily food of seeming 
evidence came to the roguish youngsters. 

The family had moved into the house at 
Hydesville on December 11, 1847. The mother 
began to hear strange sounds almost from that 
date— strange because they occurred with great 
frequency and were oddly repeated. The children 
slept in what was called the East Eoom ; the 
parents in an adjoining chamber. At all hours 
of the night, almost, the sounds were heard ; but 
it happened that they always occurred when one 
or both of the children were wide awake. The 



86 ORIGIN OF THE FRAUD. 

mother, in a statement which has been published 
as one of the so-called proofs of the genuineness 
of these manifestations, says that the sounds 
could with difficulty be located. " Sometimes it 
seemed as if the furniture was moved ; but on 
examination we found everything in order. The 
children had become so alarmed that I thought 
best to have them sleep in the room with us. 
* * * On the night of the first disturbance we 
all got up and lighted a candle and searched the 
house, the noises continuing during the time, and 
being heard near the same place." 

How natural it was that little children, being 
averse to sleeping away from their elders in a dark 
room in a lone country neighborhood, should take 
advantage of a pretext such as this to get their 
bed placed nearer to that of their parents ! Such, 
indeed, was the immediate result. 

The third night of the "rappings" was the 
31st of March, 1848. Mrs. Fox says : 

" The children who slept in the other bed in 



ORIGIN OF THE FRAUD. 87 

the room heard the rappings and tried to make 
similar sounds with their fingers, 

" Katie exclaimed : 

" ' Mr. Splitfoot,' (the imaginary person who 
was supposed to make the noises), ' do as I do ;' 
clapping her hands. The sound instantly fol- 
lowed her with the same number of raps ; when 
she stopped, the sound ceased for a short time. 
Then Margaret said in sport : ' Now, do just as 
I do ; count one, two, three, four,' striking one 
hand against the other at the same time, and the 
raps came as before. * * * I then thought I 
could put a test that no one in the place could 
answer. I asked the noises to rap my children's 
ages, successively. Instantly, each one of my 
children's ages was given correctly, pausing 
between them sufficiently long to individualize 
them until the seventh, at which a longer pause 
was made, and then three more emphatic raps 
were given, corresponding to the age of the little 
one that died, which was my youngest child. I 
then asked : ' Is this a human being that answers 



88 ORIGIN OF THE FRAUD. 

my questions so correctly V There was no rap. 
I asked : ' Is it a spirit ? If so, make two raps,' 
which were instantly given as soon as the request 
was made. I then said : ' If it is an injured 
spirit, make two raps,' which were instantly 
made, causing the house to tremble. I asked : 
' Were you injured in this house V The answer 
was given as before. ' Is the person living that 
injured you V Answer by raps in the same man- 
ner. I ascertained by the same method that it 
was a man, aged thirty- one years ; that he had 
been murdered in this house ; and his remains 
were buried in the cellar ; that his family con- 
sisted of a wife and five children, two sons and 
three daughters, all living at the time of his 
death, but that his wife had since died." 

Then the supposed spirit was asked if it would 
continue to "rap " if the neighbors were called in 
to listen. The answer was affirmative. 

And so they were called in. 

This caused the commencement of that great 
excitement which so soon spread from neighbor- 



ORIGIN OF THE FRAUD. 89 

hood to village, from the village to the near-by 
city of Kochester, and thence all over the coun- 
try. 



Mrs. Margaret Fox Kane says at the present 
time : 

" The apple-dropping trick appeared to us small 
children so simple and innocent, that we could 
only wonder that any one attached so great an 
importance to the sounds we produced. Only 
think of our ages at that time, and then ask, if 
you will, how we could have even the shade of a 
realization of the real meaning of this deception ! 

" This lying book of Mrs. Underbill's, notwith- 
standing its abominable object, does give some 
slight inkling of the truth here and there. 

"It is thus that the wicked confound them- 
selves. 

"She quotes, as you see here, what she says 
to be my mother's words : 6 The children who 
slept in the other bed in the room, heard the 



90 ORIGIN OF THE FRAUD. 

rapping and tried to make similar sounds by 
snapping their fingers.' 

" Now that is really just how we first got the 
idea of producing with the joints similar sounds 
to those we had made by dropping apples with a 
string. From trying it with our fingers we then 
tried it with our feet, and it did not take long for 
us to find out that we could easily produce very 
loud raps by the action of the toe-joints when in 
contact with any substance which is a good con- 
ductor of sound. My sister Katie was the first to 
discover that we could make such peculiar noises 
with our fingers. We used to practice first with 
one foot and then the other, and finally we got 
so we could do it with hardly an effort. 

" Of course, I was so young then that many 
incidents have escaped my memory. I assert 
positively, however, that much of the effect of 
the ' rappings ' is greatly exaggerated in this state- 
ment which my mother was made to write. I 
say that she was made to write it, because the 
wording of the statement, if not largely dictated 



ORIGIN OF THE FRAUD. 91 

by others in the first place— men who desired to 
make public the details of the ' rappings ' and to 
make money by the sale of a pamphlet describing 
them — was afterwards grossly garbled, that it 
might be used to suit the dishonest purposes of 
professional spiritualists. I am not even certain 
that mother ever signed the document, of which 
Mrs. Underhill makes such great parade. The 
same is true regarding the other pieces of 
so-called evidence in her work. Utterly futile as 
they are, when confronted with my living testi- 
mony, and when judged by their own internal 
weakness, I should not regard them as in any 
sense genuine unless I could see the original 
handwriting and could recognize the signatures. 
I say to you now, that professional spiritualists 
are capable of going to any lengths to bolster up 
their impostures. No forgery, so long as there 
was the least chance of its succeeding, as a 
furtherance to their object, would in the least 
repel them. Some of the so-called statements in 
Leah's book I believe were manufactured from 



92 ORIGIN OF THE FRAUD. 

beginning to end, though to tell you the truth I 
have avoided reading the greater part of it 
because of the disgust I have felt for a long time 
for that whole infamous system of pretense and 
falsehood. 

" Well, we were led on unintentionally by my 
good mother in the perpetration of this great 
wrong. She used to say when we were sitting 
in a dark circle at home : ' Is this a disembodied 
spirit that has taken possession of my dear chil- 
dren V And then we would ' rap ' just for the fun 
of the thing, you know, and mother would declare 
that it was the spirits that were speaking. 

"Soon it went so far, and so many persons 
had heard the ' rappings ' that we could not con- 
fess the wrong without exciting very great anger 
on the part of those we had deceived. So we 
went right on. 

" It is wonderful, indeed, how two little chil- 
dren could have made this discovery, and how, by 
simply obeying the natural thirst for the marvel- 
ous, in others, and their inherent superstition, 



ORIGIN OF THE FKAUD. 93 

they should have advanced step by step, in the 
fraud, deluding those who most ardently wished 
to be deluded. 

"Until first suggested to us by our mother, 
who was perfectly innocent in her belief, the 
thought of c spirits ' had never entered our heads. 
We were too young and too simple to imagine 
such a thing." 



94: GARBLED AND DISTORTED TESTIMONY. 



CHAPTER VIL 

GARBLED AND DISTORTED TESTIMONY. 

So the neighbors were called in at the Hydes- 
ville house and the (i rappings " were continued. 

By diligent questioning on the part of the 
older persons in the Fox household and of the 
neighbors, the mysterious noises were made to 
affirm or to deny almost anything which was 
suggested to the " mediums," often in accordance 
with knowledge that, it had been believed, was 
only possessed by a few persons. 

And so the wonder grew, day by day. 

Pursuing the idea that a man had been 
murdered in the house, the whole of a very horri- 
ble history was obtained, and the name even of 
the supposed murderer was indicated by affima- 
tive "raps" when mentioned together with 



GARBLED AND DISTORTED TESTIMONY. \)D 

others in a tentative way. The occupation of the 
victim was said to be that of a pedler. He had 
$500 in money and was buried in the creek which 
ran past the house. 

Mrs. Underhill admits that some of the neigh- 
bors were misled and went to digging in the 
creek, called Ganargua, the water of which was 
then very low. But they speedily recognized the 
absurdity of this undertaking, and the girls, 
Maggie, Katie and Lizzie laughed at them for 
their pains. The bones of an old horse were 
found there and nothing more. 

By this time the two sisters had arrived at 
very great proficiency in producing the raps. 
Such a crude and easily detected means as the 
bobbing of apples on the floor was early discarded. 
Often in the morning, before they dressed, and 
after the old folks had left their room, the sisters 
would stand in their bare feet on the floor and 
vie with each other in the laughable exercise of 
making the " strange " noises. It was impossible, 
of course, that Lizzie should not know the whole 



95 GABBLED AND DISTORTED TESTIMONY. 

truth, although being about thirteen years old at 
this time, she was unabled to imitate the "raps " 
very successfully. Indeed, it is said that she was 
too frank and outspoken in disposition to engage 
long in any deception. When the children per- 
sisted in deluding their mother, partly for their 
amusement and partly because they were ashamed 
to retract what had already caused so much excite- 
ment and had drawn so much attention to them- 
selves, Lizzie used to break out indignantly : 

" Now, Maggie, how can you say that it ivas 
done by spirits ! You know yourself that it's all a 
story. IV s a great shame to pretend such things." 

Many occurrences of this description I have 
gathered from Mrs. Kane. 

But Mrs. Leah Underhill, in her jumbled up 
narrative, states that " Wlien the raps broke out 
suddenly close to some of the family, or at the 
table, one of the girls would accuse the other of 
having caused them, saying, ( Now you did that, 
etc., etc?" 

Thanks to Mrs. Leah Underhill, such hints of 



GARBLED AND DISTORTED TESTIMONY. 97 

the true explanation of these "manifestations" 
are plentiful throughout her book, and one needs 
only to bring some little intelligence to bear upon 
it to read between the hues the whole story of 
the fraud. 

And here let me quote a passage which only 
goes to show how very strong was the love of 
deviltry in the children : 

" Father had always been a regular Methodist 
in good standing, and was invariable in his prac- 
tice of morning prayers ; and when he ivould be 
kneeling upon his chair, it would sometimes 
amuse the children to see him open tuide his eyes 
as knocks would sound and vibrate on his chair 
itself. He expressed it graphically to mother : 
' When I am done praying that jigging stops.' " 

Mrs. Margaret Fox Kane distinctly remembers 
incidents like this one ; only she qualifies the 
narrative by saying that her father never opened 
his eyes when these annoyances came while he 
was at prayer, but went devoutly on to the end 
without heeding them. 



98 GARBLED AND DIbTOKTED TESTIMONY. 

How absurd for any one to suppose that if 
these sounds were produced by a cause unknown 
to the children, they would laugh at them and 
regard them as very great sport, instead of tremb- 
ling and crying with affright ! 

"The sounds which were heard at those 
times," says Mrs. Kane in her statement to the 
writer, "were all produced by Katie and myself, 
and by no other being or spirit under the sun. 
Nor did we always c!o it with our feet. Frequent- 
ly in that early stago of the excitement about the 
'rappings,' we would make the sounds with our 
fingers, provided it was easy to do so without 
causing suspicion. In order to do it unknown to 
any one, we would sit with one hand hidden by 
an elbow resting upon the table, or the woodwork 
of a chair. 

" Of course, our mother in her earnest belief, 
poor soul, excited us to do a great deal more than 
otherwise we would had done. The mystery of 
the sounds absorbed her entire being for the 
time. She became pale and worn-looking and 



GARBLED AND DISTORTED TESTIMONY. 99 

thought that great misfortunes were to happen, 
and prayed often and fervently. I can well 
remember how my heart used to smite me at 
times when I looked upon her and knew that 
Katie and I were the cause of all her trouble. In 
later years, long after I had come to the age of 
understanding, I had very bitter reasons for such 
pangs of remorse, especially towards the last of 
mother's life, when, as I know, she was in a great 
measure undeceived and feared for the perdition 
of the souls of her children." 

In Mrs. Underbill's book, (written for her by 
another,) there is an effort to convey the impres- 
sion that John D. Fox, her father, shared in the 
belief which she sought to establish in the spirit- 
ual origin of the " knockings." Such an implica- 
tion Mrs. Kane declares to be utterly false. He 
never manifested in any way a tendency toward 
such belief ; on the contrary, he always showed 
by his conduct and his manner of speech, the 
utmost repugnance to it, and a perfect contempt 
for the weakness which could lead one into it. 



100 GARBLED AND DISTORTED TESTIMONY. 

Margaret Fox, the mother, used to say to her 
husband : 

"Now, John, don't you see that it's a wonder- 
ful thing P 

" No, I don't," he would answer. " Don't talk 
to me about it. I don't want to hear a word 
about it !" 

Mrs. Margaret Fox Kane says, further: "My 
father did not believe in Spiritualism. The 
excitement which we caused annoyed him a great 
deal. He signed a statement which merely 
amounted to his declaring that he did not know 
how the noises originated. He was cajoled into 
doing this. He wanted to get rid of the impor- 
tunities of those who believed, or affected to 
believe, in the 'Tappings.'" 



Such is the story of the earliest " rappings " at 
Hydesville. 

It is embellished by Mrs. Underbill with many 
transparent falsehoods. But still further to bol- 
ster it up, it was thought necessary to discover 



GARBLED AND DISTORTED TESTIMONY. 101 

traditions, or to invent " hearsay " anecdotes, giv- 
ing to the house in which they lived a ghostly 
history. There are few country houses about 
which the memory of the oldest neighboring 
inhabitant does not recall something or other 
remarkable and strange, which was told him 
by some one or other whose identity is very 
indefinite, in the dim, distant past. Thus it is 
stated that odd noises had been heard in the 
Hydesville house during several previous years by 
successive occupants. But it is confessed that 
none of those persons (whose testimony no one 
pretends to give) had obtained any intelligible 
messages from another world. 

Mrs. Kane states that all of this alleged neigh- 
borhood gossip was totally unknown to her at 
the time, and she believes that it had its chief — or 
perhaps its only — origin, in the morbid imagina- 
tions of those who were the first to set it going. 



102 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FKAUD. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRAUD. 

Now we come to the moment when Ann Leah 
Fox Fish, the eldest sister, thirty-one years of 
age at that time, appears upon the scene of the 
wondrous and so-called supernatural commotion 
at the little rustic hamlet of Hydesville. 

No " mediumistic " suggestions or impulses 
had ever come to her. Not one, though she had 
lived twenty-three years longer in the world than 
the dark-eyed, fascinating little girl who produced 
the first mysterious sounds in her mothers home. 

The excitement had reached a great height, 
and a pamphlet was already in the press detailing 
the whole of the wonderful performances at 
Hydesville, when Leah first heard of them. She 
hastened thither at once. Some idea of the profit 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRAUD. 103 

which could be derived from awakened public 
interest in the matter, seems to have come to her 
very promptly. She found that the family had 
moved from the " haunted " house to that of her 
brother, David. She investigated the source of 
the ' ' raps." Mrs. Kane says that one of the first 
things which she did upon her arrival at the 
house, was to take both her and Katie apart and 
to cause them to undress and to show her the 
manner of producing the mysterious noises. 
Never for a moment was the cold and calculating 
brain of the eldest sister a dupe to the cunning 
pranks of the little children. So interested was 
she in the matter, that she insisted upon taking 
back with her to Eochester, at the end of a fort- 
night, her daughter Lizzie, and Katie, her sister — 
Maggie not being inclined to go with her. And, 
in the interval, she practised " rapping" herself, 
with her toes, after the manner illustrated by the 
girls. She found great difficulty in producing 
the same effect, however, as the joints of her feet 
were no loDger as pliable as in childhood. The 



104 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FKAUD. 

effort required was also much greater, and never 
during her whole lifetime did she succeed in 
attaining to much proficiency in this method of 
deception. The pronounced movement, neces- 
sary in her case to cause even a faint sound to be 
heard, was easy to detect. 

" Often," says Mrs. Kane, "when we were 
giving seances together, I have been ashamed and 
mortified by the awkward manner in which she 
would do it. People would observe the effort 
she made to produce even moderate 'rappings,' 
and then they would look at me in suspicion 
and surprise. It required every bit of my skill 
and my best tact to prevent them from going 
away convinced of the imposture." 

On the way to Eochester by canal, the "rap- 
pings," according to Mrs. Underhill, pursued her. 
The "Spirits became quite bold and rapped 
loudly "at the dinner-table in the cabin; "and 
occasionally " she adds, u one end of the table 
would jump up and nearly spill the ivater out of 
our glasses ; bid there was so much noise on the 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRAUD.' 105 

boat {going through the locks, etc.) that only ive, 
ivho recognized the sounds, knew of them." 

It would be easy, indeed — on this very thin 
reservation, to the effect that "only we, who 
recognized the sounds, knew of thenf' — to 
denounce the whole of this statement as the 
grossest falsehood. I have, however, the personal 
assurance of Mrs. Catharine Fox Jencken that 
the "rappings" were really heard, but that 
they were done by her with her feet. On the 
other hand, she declares that the joggling or lift- 
ing of the table never took place ; nor did she ever 
hear of it till Mrs. Underbill's book was pub- 
lished. It may be observed here that the latter 
carefully refrains from informing us whether the 
passengers also failed to observe the singular dis- 
turbance of the cabin table, at which they were 
dining. 

At Eochester, Mrs. Fish seems to have de- 
voted herself to developing and elaborating the 
falsehood of Spiritualism. Singularly enough, to 

this matron, who had never before evinced the 
5* 



106 • DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRAUD. 

least possession of so-called " mediumistic " quali- 
ties, all sorts of grotesque and terrorizing won- 
ders now arrived. This is a fair specimen of her 
narrative, relating to the period in question : 

"In the evening, my friend, Jane Little, and 
two or three other friends, called in to spend an 
hour or two with us. We sang and I played on 
the piano ; but even then, while the lamp was 
burning brightly (!), I felt the deep throbbing of 
the dull accompaniment of the invisibles, keeping 
time to the music as I played ; but I did not wish 
to have my visitors know it, and the spirits 
seemed kind enough not to make themselves 
heard (!) that others would observe what was so 
apparent to me." 

The book to which I am obliged to refer so 
constantly, and which is a good example of the 
bulk of spiritualistic literature, is full of passages 
ten times as absurd as this one, and having just 
as strongly the stamp of the crudest and most 
clumsy invention. For the most part, the only 
appropriate treatment for such absurdities is con- 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRAUD. 107 

temptuous silence. Occasionally, however, I 
shall find it necessary, for the sake of complete- 
ness in this exposition, to meet them with posi- 
tive refutation, which in reality they do not 
deserve. 

Having thus got one of the clever and lively 
little girls under her own control, Leah soon 
induced her mother to come to Eochester with 
the other. Nothing could show more clearly that 
she had already formed the resolve to reap a har- 
vest of gain and renown from this auspicious 
beginning, than her decisive course, instantly 
upon realizing the public wonder and curiosity 
which the " rappings " had excited. 

It was absolutely necessary to delude some 
people who were near, and who should have been 
dear to her, as well as the careless and easily 
gullible public. The good and simple-hearted old 
mother would never have been a partner in con- 
scious deception. The matter-of-fact, unspecula- 
tive father, must be brought to a point where he 
would at least not deny the claims of the so-called 



108 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FKAUD. 

" mediums/' his daughters. The honest and out- 
spoken Lizzie must be awed into discretion by the 
prospect of great prosperity, which was opened 
before them, and the lesson that if she spoke too 
freely they would surely be deprived of it. Some 
stalwart and docile sympathizers must be enlisted 
outside of her own people who could be depended 
upon to stand by them as against too strenuous 
inquiry, or hot-tempered public assault. 

Immediately upon Margaret's arrival at the 
house in Eochester, in which Mrs. Fish lived, and 
which adjoined a graveyard, the " manifes- 
tations " redoubled. They were produced by the 
combined efforts of Leah, Margaret and Katie. 
Mrs. Underhill narrates that one night, about 
this time, a " spirit" walked about in their room, 
as if in his bare feet, when they were all supposed 
to be in bed. She continues: "He answered 
my question by stamping on the floor. I was 
amused — although afraid. He seemed so willing 
to do my bidding that I could not resist the temp- 
tation of speaking to him as he marched around 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE FKAUD. 109 

my bed. I said, 'Mat Foot, can you dance the 
Highland fling ?' This seemed to delight him. I 
sang the music for him, and he danced most 
admirably. This shocked mother and she said : 
* 0, Leah, how can you encourage that fiend by 
singing for him to dance V I soon found that 
they took advantage of my f amiliarity, and gath- 
ered in strong force around us. And here lan- 
guage utterly fails to describe the incidents that 
occurred. Loud whispering, giggling, scuffling, 
groaning, death-struggles, murder scenes of the 
most fearful character — I forbear to describe 
them. Mother became so alarmed that she called 
to Calvin to come up stairs. He came — angry at 
the spirits — and declared that ' he would conquer 
or die in the attempt.' This seemed to amuse 
them. They went to his bed, raised it up and let 
it down, and shook it violently. He was still 
determined not to yield to them. 

" Before Calvin came up stairs, and during a 
short lull in their performances, we quickly 
removed our beds to the floor, hoping thereby to 



110 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FEAUD. 

prevent them from raising us up and letting us 
down with such violence. Calvin said as he 
came up, that we were f oolish to make our beds 
on the floor, as it pleased the spirits to see how 
completely they had conquered us. So he laid 
down on his bed, and quietly awaited develop- 
ments. Mother said, ' Calvin, I wish your bed 
was on the floor, too. We have not been 
disturbed since we left the bedstead. 5 Calvin 
remarked, ' They are up to some deviltry now. I 
hear them.' He no sooner uttered these words, 
than a shower of slippers came flying at him as 
he lay in his bed. He bore this without a mur- 
mur. The next instant he was struck violently 
with his cane. He seized it and struck back, 
right and left, with all his strength, without hit- 
ting anything ; but received a palpable bang in 
return for every thrust he made. He sprang to 
his feet and fought with all his might. Every- 
thing thrown at him he pitched back to them, 
until a brass candlestick was thrown at him, cut- 
ting his lip. This quite enraged him. He pro- 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRAUD. Ill 

nounced a solemn malediction and throwing him- 
self on the bed, he vowed he would have nothing 
more to do with ' fiendish spirits.' 

"He was not long permitted to remain in 
quiet there. They commenced at his bedstead 
and deliberately razed it to the floor, leaving the 
headboard in one place, the footboard in another, 
the two sides at angles, and the bedclothes scat- 
tered about the room. He was left lying on his mat- 
tress, and for a moment there was silence ; after 
which some slight movements were heard in the 
'green room.' I had stowed a large number of 
balls of carpet rags in an old chest standing on 
the floor, with two trunks and several other arti- 
cles on the top of it. It seemed but the work of a 
moment for them to get at the carpet balls, 
which came flying at us in every direction, hit- 
ting us in the same place every time. They took 
us for their target, and threw with the skill of an 
archer. Darkness made no difference with them, 
and if either of us attempted to remonstrate 
against such violence, they would instantly give 
the remonstrant the benefit of a ball." 



112 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRAUD. 

Mrs. Kane remembers with tolerable distinct- 
ness the antics that distinguished this sojourn of 
her mother, herself and her sisters in the 
Eochester house. She and Katie did indulge in 
wild larks in the sleeping rooms of the family at 
all hours of the night. The " whispering" and 
" giggling," the " scuffling" and "groaning," and 
the tragic mimicry were natural to childish dare- 
devils like themselves, and one can well under- 
stand how, with the attendant " rappings," the 
showers of slippers hurled from the " green 
room," the shaking of Calvin's bed and the 
" banging " of him on the head, these things may 
have made the desired impression upon both him 
and the mother. Mrs. Kane says that this is the 
true and only explanation of it all, and that in 
comparatively recent years, at seances in Adelphi 
Hall, New York, she has done the most audacious 
things, similar in character to these, under cover 
of semi-darkness, and has not been detected, 
simply because nearly all of those who were pres- 
ent were believers and were not too curious. 



DEVELOPMENT OF TIIE FLAUD. 113 

There is another " evidence " given by Ann 
Leah which is too pitiably ridiculous to be con- 
sidered, except as a subject of laughter. 

"Oiten at meal-time," she says, "the table 
would be gradually agitated, and Calvin in partic- 
ular, [alas, poor Calvin !] would be more disturbed 
than the rest of us. Once he arose from his chair 
and reached across the table for a heavy pitcher 
of water, when the chair was instantly removed 
and he sat down on the floor, spilling the water 
all over himself !" 

Mrs. Kane's sole comment upon this is : "Of 
course, we sliiy did it, as we did many other 
hoydenish tricks. 

" We also used to twitch mother's cap off and 
gently jerk the comb out of her hair, just to tease 
her. Leah says that these things were done by 
the spirits ! How silly to address such a puer- 
ile pretense to any one gifted with common 
sense !" 

As a companion picture to what has gone 
before, let the reader also engrave this " miracul- 
ous " scene upon the retina of his imagination : 



114 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FEAUD. 

"We had stored our winter provisions in the 
cellar. Among them were several barrels of 
apples, potatoes, turnips, etc. From this cellar 
came the apples, potatoes and turnips flying 
across our room, hitting all in precisely the same 
place every time. It will now be remembered 
that these articles were in the cellar under the 
ground floor, and had to come from the rear of the 
cellar, through the door, into the kitchen, up the 
stairs, into the pantry on the second floor, through 
the pantry into the dining room, up the second 
flight of stairs, into the large room in which we 
slept, hitting us as we lay in our beds near the 
front window. * * * 

"A cabinet shop was the next thing repre- 
sented by the spirits. They seemed to be pos- 
sessed of all kinds of tools to work with. After 
sawing off boards they would let them fall heavily 
on the floor, jarring everything around them. 
Then, after planing, jointing, driving nails, and 
screwing down the lid of a coffin, they would 
shove the hollow sounding article about the 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRAUD. 115 

room. (This we understood at a later day.) 
Often to our utter amazement, pickets from the 
discarded lots in the cemetery came flying 
through the room over our heads, on our beds, 
like debris in a tornado. They came from the 
extreme west side of the burying-ground, through 
that lot, and the distance of about two hundred 
feet through our lot ; an entire distance of about 
four hundred feet. That they came by no visible 
means, we knew ; as no human power could have 
thrown them through the air into our chamber 
window, hitting us in our beds, in the same place 
every time." 

In July, 1848, Leah, her sisters and mother, 
revisited the Hydesville house, which was then 
unoccupied. David, the brother, had fallen by 
this time into the plans of Leah, whether a dupe 
or an accomplice, Margaret, even at this day, is 
unable to say. To him was due the very first 
suggestion that the so-called spirits might 
communicate with the living by means of the 
alphabet. And since then, this has been the 



116 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRAUD. 

chief stay of spiritualism, literally the A B C of 
all its so-called science. It is a singular com- 
mentary upon the consistency of the "spirits," 
or the good faith of those who professed to inter- 
pret their messages, that the code of communica- 
tion at first employed in their circles was entirely 
different in the meaning of the simple signals 
used from the one which finally was adopted. 
Would the " spirits," think you, who are divorced 
from the trammels of this world, have been 
guilty of this simple error and have been obliged 
to correct it afterward, had they not been impos- 
tors ? 

The object of Mrs. Fish in going back to 
Hydesville is quite apparent. There was yet an 
unworked mine of wonder and superstition, out of 
which the dust of dross might be thrown into the 
eyes of the credulous, as the pure gold of revela- 
tion. 

In the first place, it was necessary to get from 
the so-called invisible intelligence an injunction 
to seek for proofs of the foul murder which it 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE FKAUD. 117 

had been said had been committed in the house 
where the "rappings " were originally heard. 

Mind you, months had then elapsed since the 
digging had been first done in the cellar and the 
Ganargua creek near by, and David S., who was 
now wholly in sympathy with Leah in her view 
of the future importance of the new superstition, 
had lived in the neighborhood ever since, while 
nobody had remained in the " haunted " house to 
be cognizant of what might have taken place 
there in the mean time. 

By the new code system of obtaining answers 
to queries, a mandate to dig up the cellar and to 
search for something or other there was obtained, 
and obeyed, the work lasting two or three days. 
It is stated by Leah that some fragments of an 
earthen bowl, a few bones, some teeth and some 
bunches of hair were found. She says that 
doctors pronounced the bones to be human. 

Of course, the names of these doctors are 
nowhere to be found in her volume, nor does any 
one, un warped by prejudice, really believe more 
than a very small part of this story. 



118 DEVELOPMENT OP THE FRAUD. " 

That there was digging is certain. 

That there had been plenty of time to hide 
anything that David Fox had desired to hide in 
the cellar, is certain. 

Yet Mrs. Kane remembered absolutely nothing 
about anything having been found in the cellar 
that bore the slightest semblance to any portion 
of the human frame. If any bones (perchance, 
like those found in the creek, the skeleton of a 
horse) were uncovered, she denies positively that 
any doctor ever gave the opinion that they were 
the remains of a man. 

She pronounces equally false, the statement of 
Leah that about the time the digging was aban- 
doned, on account of the angry interference of a 
mob, the spades of the diggers struck upon a hol- 
low-sounding, wooden substance, which might or 
might not have been a box of ill-gotten plunder, 
or the rough sepulchre of the slain pedler. 

The indignation of the neighbors of the Foxes 
in Arcadia was not so much due to the fact that 
the latter persisted in pretending to communicate 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRAUD. 119 

with ghosts and uncanny elfs, as it was to the 
totally unwarranted suspicion which had been 
cast through the early "rappings" upon a man 
named Bell, who had formerly lived in the house, 
which it was now pretended was haunted. This, 
as well as other evidence of the public feeling at 
that time, was cleverly employed for her own 
benefit by Leah, who easily foresaw how any- 
thing that might bear the semblance of religious 
persecution would promote her cause, false 
though it was, by bringing to it both greater 
notoriety and widespread sympathy. 

There is no doubt, too, that if there had not 
been a very strong vein of superstition in the Fox 
family, the first " rappings " would never have 
produced the deep impression that they did on the 
mother and her son David. Many strange stories, 
which had been handed down from a grand- 
father or a great-grandfather, a great uncle or a 
great aunt, were told at the fireside with such 
embellishment as will inevitably come from 
recital and repetition to a wonder- delighting 



120 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRAUD. 

audience. There were traditions of prophecies 
fulfilled and of dumb cattle behaving queerly, all 
of which Mrs. Underhill has very carefully set 
down and magnified in her own peculiar manner 
to her own unholy purpose. 



THE MERCENARY CAMPAIGN. 121 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE MERCENARY CAMPAIGN. 

The public campaign of Spiritualism was now- 
begun. 

A sufficient hubbub had been made over it to 
induce attention from all sorts and conditions of 
people. 

The mother and her daughters went again to 
Rochester, and there placed themselves in the 
hands of the first of many " committees of 
friends " who were used as tools or confederates, 
according to their character, to " humbug" the 
public more completely. The character and 
functions of these committees may be judged 
from the following, which is found in Leah's 
book: "The names of this committee were 
Isaac Post, R. D. Jones, Edward Jones. John 



122 TIIE MERCENARY CAMPAIGN. 

Kedzie and Andrew Clackner. They were faith- 
ful friends, who never permitted any one to visit 
us unattended by themselves or some reliable per- 
son." 

The so-called spirits soon urged in laborious 
communications that it was needful to make 
their demonstrations more public, a ad that an 
" investigation" of the "rappings," ought there- 
fore to be made by some well-known men. The 
" spirits " were even so kind as to spell out by 
means of the tentative alphabet, the names of those 
whom they wished to have appointed to perform 
this part. The desire for advertisement, indeed, 
was not likely to cause the rejection of the name 
of any available person, whose prominence would 
increase the public interest in the movement. 
We are not astonished, then, to find that Fred- 
erick Douglass was one of those present at this 
earliest farce of investigation. It was the fore- 
runner of many others which were like unto it, 
and gradually, in their stations in various cities, 
the " Fox Sisters v drew to their seances nearly all 



THE MERCENARY CAMPAIGN. 123 

of the conspicuous persons of the time, who 
regarded the effects exhibited to them in as many 
different lights as their minds and characters were 
different. 

Naturally enough, after this compliance with 
their desires, the " spirits" directed that a public 
exhibition should be given. The largest hall in 
Eochester was hired for the purpose. 

And here the infamy of bringing forward two 
little girls to do the work of base and vulgar 
charlatanism, appears in all its revolting charac- 
ter. The eldest of the children was then but 
nine years old. Had she been dressed in accord- 
ance with her tender age, it would have taken 
only very slight observation to detect the secret of 
the " rappings." Those persons now living, who 
were present at this and at other public exhibi- 
tions of Spiritualism at that time, will easily 
remember that Margaret and Catherine Fox 
appeared on a platform in long gowns, as if they 
had been full-grown women. The dresses were 
expressly prepared by order of Mrs. Ann Leah 



124 THE MERCENARY CAMPAIGN. 

Fox Fish, the evil genius of these unfortunate 
victims. Without these robes nothing whatever 
could have been done in the way of " spirit rap- 
pings," under the matter-of-fact scrutiny of the 
public. 

To carry out the delusion to the utmost, every 
detail touching these earliest exhibitions was 
directed through ik spirit rappings," even to the 
insertion of grandiloquent notices in the news- 
papers. 

In all of the " investigations " of the " rap- 
pings," at this or at any other time, the attentive 
student will find somewhere a loop-hole of escape 
from observation, an unguarded avenue of detec- 
tion. In some of the principal seances, described 
at great length by Leah, the conditions favorable 
to fraud and illusion were so very obvious that 
they ought to have excited derision in the veriest 
child. 

The following passage in the report of a so- 
called investigation, is pointed to by professional 
spiritualists as one of the best " evidences" of the 
genuineness of Spiritualism : 



THE MERCENARY CAMPAIGN. 125 

" One of the committee placed one of his 
hands on the feet of the ladies and the other on 
the floor, and though the feet were not moved, 
there was a distinct jar of the floor." 

Here, then, there were three operators and 
one investigator. The latter puts his hand on 
the feet of the ladies. How many feet, pray you ? 
There were six feet on the platform, as we know, 
all of which had been carefully educated in the 
production of ,"raps." Could one man's hand 
cover them all ? And if it could not, does not this 
pretended " evidence " fall at once to the ground ? 

All of the recitals made by spiritualistic 
writers concerning the doings of the " Fox Sis- 
ters," contain this element of vagueness, the lack 
of precision and completeness, which to persons 
unaccustomed to analysis may possibly appear 
plausible enough, but to the experienced inquirer 
is merely a more certain proof of weakness and 
prevarication. 

Volumes might be written to meet the state- 
ments advanced in every case, and to show how 



126 THE MERCENARY CAMPAIGN. 

clumsily misleading they are. It is not worth 
while at this late day, and in that direction, to do 
more than I have already accomplished in this 
chapter. 

Indeed, the actual demonstration of the fact 
that the far-famed "rappings" are produced in 
the manner described at the beginning of this 
work, should be quite sufficient to all logical 
minds, to condemn every claim that the profes- 
sional mediums have advanced as being the 
agents of any supernatural manifestations. 

The good old Latin maxim never applied with 
greater force than it does here : Falsus in unum, 
falsus in omnibus. 

The operations of the eldest sister all tended 
to the one end : fame and money. In Eochester, 
fees for the first time were accepted by " medi- 
ums," and shortly afterward a tariff of prices 
for admission to the seances and the "private 
circles" was adopted and made public. No 
jugglers ever drove a more prosperous business 
than did the " Fox family" for a number of 



THE MERCENARY CAMrAIGN. 127 

years, when once fairly launched upon that sea of 
popular wonder, which somebody has said is sup- 
plied by the inherent fondness of mankind for 
being humbugged. 

Mrs. Fish had actually the project of founding 
a new religion, and she tried hard to convince 
her younger sisters and her own child that there 
were really such things as spiritual communica- 
tions, notwithstanding that all of those that were 
produced in their seances they knew to be per- 
fectly false. She asserted that even before Maggie 
and Katie were born she had received messages 
warning her that they were destined to do great 
things. 

" In all of our seances, while we were under 
her charge," says Mrs. Kane, "we knew just 
when to rap ' yes ' and when to rap ' no ' by sig- 
nals that she gave us, and which were unknown to 
any one but ourselves. Of course, we were too 
young, then, to have been successful very long in 
deluding people, had it not been for an arrange- 
ment such as this. 



128 THE MERCENARY CAMPAIGN. 

"Her own daughter, Lizzie, had no manner 
of patience with her transparent pretence. 

"''Ma,' she would exclaim, when Leah 
attempted to impress her with a belief in some of 
the frauds which she perpetrated, 'how can you 
ever pretend that that is done by the spirits ? I 
am ashamed to know even that you do such 
things — it's dreadfully wicked.' " 

Some day it will be known that one other per- 
son beside Lizzie, who afterwards occupied a filial 
relation to this woman, detested even more 
strongly the atmosphere of hypocrisy and deceit 
with which the latter surrounded herself, and 
hated, too, the rankling obligation under which an 
unkind fate had placed her. 

It is not so wonderful that men of learning 

and originality were drawn to the mysterious 

seances of the Fox girls, when it is considered 

that they became a sort of fashionable "fad," as 

the receptions of Mesmer did in the last century 

in Paris. There were great opportunities there 

for studying human nature, and the period 
G* 



THE MERCENARY CAMPAIGN. 129 

was one of a notable awakening of scientific and 
transcendental speculation. Such men as Greeley, 
Bancroft, Fenimore Cooper, Bryant, N. P. Willis, 
Dr. Francis, John Bigelow, Eipley, Dr. Griswold, 
Dr. Eliphalet Nott, Theodore Parker, William 
M. Thackeray, James Freeman Clarke, Thomas 
M. Foote and Bayard Taylor, and women of the 
intellectual strength of Alice Cary and Harriet 
Beecher Stowe became deeply interested. But 
nearly all of these lost their interest in Spiritual- 
ism in time, for they became morally, if not posi- 
tively convinced, that the effects produced were 
the mere result of fraud. 

There was another attraction, however, in 
those early days. The younger "mediums" 
were both very pretty and very young. Sympa- 
thy and commiseration, as much as aught else, 
often drew visitors to them, and caused such visi- 
tors to continue their friends. Thus, we find that 
Horace Greeley and Dr.Elisha Kent Kane became 
important factors in the lives of both of these in- 
teresting creatures, the former educating Katie, 
and the latter striving to form Maggie's mind 



130 THE MERCENARY CAMPAIGN, 

and to reform her character with the express 
object of making her his wife. 

Mrs. Kane, in commenting upon the life which 
she led at that time, says : 

" When I look back, I can only say in defense 
of my depraved calling, that I took not the 
slightest pleasure in it. The novelty and the ex- 
citement that had half intoxicated me as a child 
were fast being dissipated. The true conception 
of this infamous thing soon dawned upon me. 
The awakening was full of anguish — the anguish 
of hope, as well as the anguish of grief. I then 
first knew Dr. Kane, and with that acquaintance 
entered the new light into my life." 



6PIKITUALISTIC BOOMERANGS. J31 



CHAPTER X. 

SPIRITUALISTIC BOOMERANGS., 

In nearly all of the so-called investigations of 
the "rappings" produced by the " Fox Sisters," 
there was an absolute absence of genuine scien- 
tific inquiry. Only once in this critical stage of 
their career, did they submit to experiment and 
examination by doctors of unquestioned repute 
and learning. The result of this investigation has 
been held up by professional spiritualists as a 
triumphant proof that the source of " rappings" 
was beyond any mortal finding out. The fact is 
that the doctors hit upon the right principle at 
the inception of the inquiry, but were misled into 
a wrong application of it, an error which the 
" mediums," of course, encouraged up to a certain 
point, so that they might gain prestige after- 
iwards by refuting it. Following out this policy, 



132 SPIRITUALISTIC BOOMERANGS. 

Mrs. Underbill has incorporated in her book the 
testimony of the doctors, heedless of the law of 
destiny, that truth must prevail finally. 

I propose to take this same statement of the 
doctors, based as it is upon an erroneous assump- 
tion and a correct theory, and show how strongly 
it sustains and plainly corroborates the explana- 
tion of the " rappings " now given by Mrs. Kane 
and Mrs. Jencken. 

The gentlemen who made this notable investi- 
gation are usually spoken of as the "Buffalo 
doctors." They were members of the faculty of 
the University of Buffalo. Austin Flint, who 
afterward held the highest medical rank in the 
metropolis, was the most prominent of the three. 
The other two were Drs. Charles A. Lee and C. B. 
Coventry. 

The theory that they advanced was that the 
mysterious noises were produced by some one of 
the articulations of the body. Their assumption 
was that it was the great joint of the knee which 
produced them. Had they worked upon their 



SPIRITUALISTIC BOOMERANGS. 133 

theory alone, and left all assumption aside, until 
actual evidence had led up to them ; or, even had 
they investigated other joints of the lower limbs, 
besides that of the knee, they must have inevita- 
bly arrived at the correct conclusion. Unfortu- 
nately, however, the idea which so beset them as 
to render their labor abortive, arose from the 
actual existence in Buffalo of a woman whose 
knee-joints could be snapped audibly at will. 

The closeness of the scrutiny applied by these 
gentlemen displeased the eldest " medium," and 
her resentment finds characteristic expression in 
her volume, printed thirty- seven years after the 
occurrence. She declares that she found Dr. Lee 
to be " a wily, deceitful man." 

If anything can circumvent cunning, it is cer- 
tainly cunning itself, and in this sense, it is 
entirely laudable when exerted in a proper cause. 
There is no doubt that strategy had to be used to 
induce this woman, conscious of her falsity, and 
schooled in subterfuges and evasions, to submit 
to a coldly scientific test. The challenge, how- 



134 SPIRITUALISTIC BOOMERANGS. 

ever, came under such circumstances, public sus- 
picion being so whetted by the fact that a woman 
had been discovered whose knee-joints possessed 
the peculiar quality of making sound, that it 
could not well be avoided, without it becoming 
generally known that the declination was a tacit 
confession of fraud. 

The doctors published very promptly the 
result of their preliminary examination, which 
was made without any special facilities being 
afforded them. 

They said : 

" Curiosity having led us to visit the rooms at 
the Phelps House, in which two females from 
Rochester, Mrs. Fish and Miss Fox, profess to 
exhibit striking manifestations from the spirit 
world, by means of which communion may be 
had with deceased friends, etc.; and having 
arrived at a physiological explanation of the 
phenomena, the correctness of which has been 
demonstrated in an instance which has since 
fallen under our observation, we have felt that a 



SPIRITUALISTIC BOOMERANGS. 135 

public statement is called for, which may, per- 
haps, serve to prevent a further waste of time, 
money and credulity (to say nothing of sentiment 
and philosophy) in connection with this so long 
successful imposition. 

"The explanation is reached almost by a 
logical necessity, on the application of a method 
of reasoning much resorted to in the diagnosis of 
diseases, namely, the reasoning by exclusion. 

: " It was reached by this method prior to the 
demonstration which has subsequently occurred. 

" It is to be assumed, first, that the manifesta- 
tions are not to be regarded as spiritual, provided 
they- can be physically or physiologically 
accounted for. Immaterial agencies are not to 
be invoked until material agencies fail. We are 
thus to exclude spiritual causation in this stage of 
the investigation. 

" Next, it is taken for granted that the 'rap- 
pings ' are not produced by artificial contrivances 
about the persons of the females, which may be 
concealed by the dress. This hypothesis is 



136 SPIRITUALISTIC BOOMERANGS. 

excluded because it is understood that the females 
have been repeatedly and carefully examined by 
lady committees. 

"It is obvious that the Wrappings' are not 
caused by machinery attached to tables, doors, 
etc., for they are heard in different rooms, and in 
different parts of the same room in which the 
females are present, but always near the spot 
where the females are stationed. This mechani- 
cal hypothesis is then to be excluded. So much 
for the negative evidence, and now for what posi- 
tively relates to the subject. 

" On carefully observing the countenances of 
the tivo females it is evident that they involve 
an effort of the will. They evidently attempted 
to conceal any indications of voluntary effort, but 
did not succeed. A voluntary effort was mani- 
fested, and it was plain that it could not be con- 
tinued very long without fatigue. Assuming, 
then, this positive fact, the inquiry arises, how 
can the will be exerted to produce sounds (' rap- 
pings ') without obvious movements of the body ? 



SPIRITUALISTIC BOOMERANGS. 137 

The voluntary muscles themselves are the only 
organs, save those which belong to the mind 
itself, over which volition can exercise any direct 
control. But contractions of the muscles do not, 
in the muscles themselves, occasion obvious 
sounds. The muscles, therefore, to develop audi- 
ble vibrations, must act upon parts with which 
they are connected. Now, it was sufficiently clear 
that the ; rappings ' were not vocal sounds ; these 
could not be produced without movements of the 
respiratory muscles, which would at once lead to 
detection. Hence, excluding vocal sounds, the 
only possible source of the noises in question, pro- 
duced as we have seen that they must be, by vol- 
untary muscular contraction, is in one or more of 
the movable articulations of the skeleton, from the 
anatomical construction of the voluntary muscles. 
This explanation remains as the only alternative. 
" By an analysis prosecuted in this manner 
we arrive at the conviction that the ' rappings,' 
assuming that they are not spiritual, are produced 
by the action of the will, through voluntary action 
on the joints. 



138 SPIRITUALISTIC BOOMERANGS. 

" Various facts may be cited to show that the 
motion of the joints, under certain circumstances, 
is adequate to produce the phenomena of the 
'Tappings.' * * * By a curious coincidence, 
after arriving at the above conclusion respecting 
the source of the sounds, an instance has fallen 
under our observation^ which demonstrates the 
fact that noises precisely identical with the spir- 
itual ( rappings ' may be produced in the knee- 
joints." 

The doctors then describe how the sounds 
may be produced in certain subjects by the par- 
tial dislocation of the knee joint ; and they add : 

"The visible vibrations of articles in the room, 
situated near the operator, occur if the limb, or 
any portion of the body, is in contact with them 
at the time the sounds are produced. The force 
of the semi- dislocation of the bone is sufficient to 
occasion distinct jarring of the doors, tables, etc., 
if in contact. The intensity of the sound may 
be varied in proportion to the force of the muscu- 
lar contractions, and this will render the appar- 
ent source of the ' rappings ' more or less distinct." 



SPIRIT DALIS TIC BOOMERANGS. 139 

I have italicized the portions of these extracts 
which apply in a measure to the action of the 
toe-joints, as well as to that of the knee. No 
especial comment upon them is needed. The 
reader may easily comprehend the relation of 
these peculiar facts. 

Knowing, from this brief of their supposed 
case, exactly what she had to apprehend from 
them, and anxious to prove triumphantly that she 
and her sisters did not make the " rappings " with 
their knees, Mrs. Fish rushed into print, and chal- 
lenged the doctors to a more public investigation, 
to be made by three men and three women, the 
latter of whom were to disrobe the " mediums," if 
they so desired. The doctors, of course, accepted. 

In her account of this scene, Mrs. Fish speaks 
of herself and her sister Maggie as "two young 
creatures thus baited as it were by cruel enemies." 
It should be remembered at this point that her 
age at that time was about thirty-four years, 
whilst that of Maggie was only eleven ! So much 
for the disingenuousness of the narrator. 



140 SPIRITUALISTIC BOOMERANGS. 

She herself says that during the test, Maggie 
and she sat on a sofa together a long time and no 
raps came. The watch was too close. Then a 
zealous and indiscreet friend rapped on the back 
of her chair, and to shield herself from seeming 
complicity, she rebuked him with great ostenta- 
tion. How kindly she felt toward fraud, how- 
ever, is shown by the excuses which she makes 
for his conduct. 

"It was certainly a severe and cruel ordeal for 
us," she goes on, "as we sat there under that 
accusation, surrounded by all these men, authori- 
ties, some of them persecutors, while the raps, 
usually so ready and familiar, tuould not come to 
our relief. Some fetv and faint ones did indeed 
come — some nine or ten. TJie doctors say in their 
account that it was while they intermitted the hold- 
ing of our feet. Such was not my impression, 
but I attach small importance to that." 

There were several sittings of the investi- 
gators in company with the " mediums," and 
Mrs. Underbill asserts that at times plentiful 



SPIRITUALISTIC BOOMERANGS. 141 

"rappings" were heard, both when their feet and 
knees were held and when they were not held. 
And then she introduces this weak and trans- 
parent piece of hypocrisy so familiar to those who 
have ever had to do with so-called "mediums": 

"We are now familiar with the fact that 
spirits often refuse to act in the presence of those 
who bring to the occasion, not a candid and fair 
spirit of inquiry for the satisfaction of an honest 
skepticism, but a bitter and offensive bigotry of 
prejudice and invincible hostility, which does not 
really seek, but rather repels the truth, and but 
little deserves the favor of its exhibition to them 
by the spirits." 

The further report of the doctors contained 
these points : 

" The two females were seated upon two chairs 
placed near together ', their heels resting on cush- 
ions, their lower limbs extended, ivith the toes ele- 
vated and the feet separated from each other. 
The object of this experiment was to secure a 
position in which the ligaments of the knee-joint 



142 SPIRITUALISTIC BOOMERANGS. 

should be made tense, and no opportunity offered 
to make a pressure with the foot. We were 
pretty well satisfied that the displacement of the 
bones requisite for the sounds could not be 
effected, unless a fulcrum were obtained by resting 
one foot upon the other, or on some resisting body. 
The company waited half an hour, but no sounds 
were heard in this position. 

"The position of the younger sister was then 
changed to a sitting posture, with the lower limbs 
extended on the sofa, the elder sister sitting in 
the customary tuay, at the other extremity of the 
sofa. The ' Spirits ' did not choose to signify their 
presence under these circumstances, although 
repeatedly requested to do so. The latter experi- 
ment went to confirm the belief that the younger 
sister alone produced the 'rappings.' These 
experiments were continued until the females 
themselves admitted that it was useless to con- 
tinue any longer at that time, with any expecta- 
tion of manifestations being made. 

" In resuming the usual position on the sofa, 



SPIRITUALISTIC BOOMERANGS. 143 

the feet resting on the floor, the knockings soon 
began to be heard" 

Then the doctors held the knees of the fair 
performers to ascertain if there was any move- 
ment when the sounds were heard : 

" The hands were kept in apposition for sev- 
eral minutes at a time, and the experiments 
repeated frequently, for the space of half an hour 
and more, with negative results ; that is to say, 
there were plenty of i raps ' when the knees were 
not held, and none when the hands were applied, 
save once; as the pressure was intentionally 
relaxed (Dr. Lee being the holder) two or three 
faint single 'raps' were heard, and Dr. Lee 
immediately averred that the motion of the bone 
was plainly perceptible to him. The experiment 
of siezing the knees as quickly as possible, when 
the knockings first commenced, ivas tried several 
times, bid alivays with the effect of putting an 
immediate quietus upon the demonstrations." 

No sensible person can doubt that the state- 
ments of facts within their actual knowledge, 



144 SPIRITUALISTIC BOOMERANGS. 

made by these three eminent physicians, are 
absolutely true. They say finally : 

" Had our experiments, which were first 
directed to this joint failed, ive should have pro- 
ceeded to interrogate, experimentally, other artic- 
ulations. But the conclusions seemed clear that 
the 'Rochester hnockings ' emanate from the knee- 
joint." 

What a pity they did not " interrogate " other 
articulations ! 

The report, erroneous as it was in its conclu- 
sions, contained so much significent truth that 
Mrs. Fish was at first staggered by its purport. 
Eut in March, 1851, she wrote again to the press 
a lengthy letter, in which she feebly attempted to 
counteract the effect of the doctor's opinion, and 
incidentally made some grave admissions. Befer- 
ring to the fact that whenever the "mediums" 
were kept in constrained positions there were no 
"manifestations," she made this remarkable 
admission : 

"It is true that when our feet were placed on 



SPIRITUALISTIC BOOMERANGS. 145 

cushions stuffed with shavings, and resting on our 
heels, there were no sounds heard, and that sounds 
tvere heard when our feet ivere resting on the 
floor ; and it is just as true that if our friendly 
spirits retired when they witnessed such harsh 
proceedings on the part of our persecutors, it was 
not in our power to detain them." 

Then she remarks that certain things happened 
after the medical gentlemen left : 

" Our feet were held from the floor by Dr. 
Gray and Mr. Clark, in presence of the whole 
committee, on the evening of the investigation 
made by the medical gentlemen (after they left) ; 
and the sounds were distinctly heard, which was 
allowed by the committee to be a far more satis- 
factory test, as they could distinctly hear the 
sounds under the feet, and feel the floor jar while 
our feet were held nearly or quite a foot from the 
floor." 

About this time, a suspicion that the "raps " 
were made by use of the toes, first found expres- 
sion, but it never seems to have been followed 



146 SPIRITUALISTIC BOOMERANGS. 

up to the point of verification. Indeed, the secret 
seems to have been kept absolutely for forty 
years, and was only revealed by the lips of Mrs. 
Margaret Fox Kane. 

I cannot refrain from quoting in this place an 
incident from the record of the common enemy, 
which further illustrates the imbecile audacity 
with which they parade their abominable fraud 
before the eyes of sensible persons. At a seance, 
in which wonderous things were done under a 
table, around which the company including Mrs. 
Fish and one of her sisters were closely seated, 
one, Mr. Stringham, apparently a doubter, 
asked : 

"May I leave the table while the others 
remain, that I may look and see the bells ring- 
ing V 

The " spirits " answered : 

"What do you think we require you to sit 
close to the table for V 

And the veracious writer adds : 

" When spirits make these physical demonstra- 



SPIRITUALISTIC BOOMERANGS. 147 

tions, they are compelled to assume shapes that 
human eyes must not look upon." 

! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 

I should be guilty of an historical omission did 
I not also notice a somewhat formal investiga- 
tion made by a committee of Harvard Professors 
and others, appointed to satisfy the exigencies of 
a newspaper controversy in Boston in 1857, and 
which Mrs. Ann Leah Fox Brown and Miss 
Catherine Fox attended. The results were wholly 
unsatisfactory and inconclusive from a scientific 
standpoint, though the moral effect of this out- 
come was strongly against the spiritualists, who 
were, of course, bound to prove their positive side 
of the case, and failed ignominiously to do so. 
The committee consisted of Professors Agassiz, 
Pierce and Horsford, Mr. George Lunt, editor of 
the Boston Courier, Dr. A. B. Gould, Mr. Allen 
Putnam, Dr. H. F. Gardner and Mr. G. W. Rains. 
The last three were pronounced spiritualists. 

Professor Agassiz, who in particular had 



148 SPIRITUALISTIC BOOMERANGS. 

studied mesmerism and so-called clairvoyance 
most carefully, and who believed to some extent 
in the former, declared with emphasis that there 
was an easy physiological explanation of all the 
effects that the "Fox Sisters," or any other "rap- 
pers," produced. The raps caused by the "Fox 
Sisters" on this occasion were but feeble and 
uncertain. When other "mediums " were under 
examination, the close watch Jkept upon them by 
the learned investigators seemed greatly to dis- 
concert them and prevented the possibility of any 
pronounced "manifestations" taking place. 

The Courier had issued a challenge offering 
five hundred dollars to any one who would 
"communicate a single word imparted to the 
' spirits,' " by its editor "in an adjoining room," 
who would "read a single word in English, 
written inside a book or sheet of paper folded in 
such a manner as we may suggest ; who would 
answer with the aid of all the higher intelligences 
he or she can invoke from the other world, ihrce 
questions * * * ;" and it added : 



SPIRITUALISTIC BOOMERANGS. 149 

" And we will not require Dr. Gardiner or the 
' mediums' to risk a single cent on the experi- 
ment. If one or all of them can do one of these 
things, the five hundred dollars shall be paid on 
the spot. If they fail, they shall pay nothing ; 
not even the expense incident to trying the experi- 
ment." 

The Committee made a report which declared 
that nothing had been done which entitled any 
one to receive the sum offered by the Courier. 
Therefore no award was made. 

A library might be written containing only 
accounts of private investigations of " spiritual 
phenomena " by able and scientific observers, all 
of which conduced to but one verdict, that every 
pretense of Spiritualism is a fraud. I deem it 
more appropriate, however, and entirely adequate 
to my purpose, to restrict my citations from such 
inquiries to those which had an absolutely unde- 
niable official or authoritative character. 



150 THE SUPREME AUDACITY OF FRAUD. 



CHAPTER XL 

THE SUPREME AUDACITY OF FRAUD. 

The multitude of forms that a certain kind of 
deception, when once it obtains a foothold in the 
public mind, will assume, is often wonderful. 

Spiritualism has resorted to all the trickery 
that for ages has been used to delude and delight 
the populace. 

Much of it could be traced back to the very 
first mountebanks who wandered about the 
streets of the ancient cities, or squatted at the 
gates of palaces or in market-places to catch the 
frequent obolus from the curious passer-by. 

In every country under the sun, the trade of 
deception has been turned to the account of 
religious superstition. The Hindus, in par- 
ticular, excel in this branch of necromancy. The 



THE SUPREME AUDACITY OF FRAUD. 151 

marvelous things that Aaron and the Egyptian 
sorcerers did before Pharaoh, are really as nothing 
compared with what the modern jugglers of India 
and China perform. All of the developments of 
the art that have taken place in the West, seem 
but trivial imitation beside these, and indeed they 
are little better. 

No sooner had Spiritualism made many prose- 
lytes, than there was no limit to its audacious 
pretensions. Its apostles imagined that they 
could go on duping the world and even hood- 
winking the scientists, and that by appealing to 
the Federal government for a formal investigation 
of its claims, which they could not have believed 
for a moment would be granted, they could 
obtain a sort of quasi-official recognition of their 
so-called new religion. 

Accordingly, on the 17th of April, 1854:, a 
petition was sent to Congress, bearing fifteen 
thousand names, and was presented in executive 
session by Senator Shields of Illinois. As a 
rather skillful contemporaneous characterization 



152 THE SUPREME AUDACITY OF FRAUD. 

of the matter, what he said on this occasion is of 
historical interest. The following were his 
words : 

I beg leave to present to the Senate a petition, with 
some fifteen thousand names appended to it, upon a very 
singular and novel subject. The petitioners declare that 
certain physical and mental phenomena of mysterious 
import, have become so prevalent in this country and 
Europe, as to engross a large share of public attention. 
A partial analysis of these phenomena attest the exist- 
ence, first, of an occult force which, is exhibited in 
sliding, raising, arresting, holding, suspending, and 
otherwise disturbing ponderable bodies, apparently in 
direct opposition to the acknowledged laws of matter, 
and transcending the accredited power of the human 
mind. Secondly, lights of different degrees of intensity 
appear in dark rooms, where chemical action or phos- 
phorescent illumination cannot be developed, and where 
there are no means of generating electricity, or of 
producing combustion. Thirdly, a variety of sounds, 
frequent in occurrence, and diversified in character, and 
of singular significance and importance, consisting of 
mysterious rapping, indicating the presence of invisible 
intelligence. Sounds are often heard like those pro- 
duced by the prosecution of mechanical operations, like 



THE SUPREME AUDACITF OF FEAUD. 153 

the hoarse murmer of the winds and waves, mingled with 
the harsh creaking of the masts and rigging of a ship 
laboring in a sea. Concussions also occur, resembling 
distant thunder, producing oscillatory movements of 
surrounding objects, and a tremulous motion of the 
premises upon which these phenomena occur. Harmo- 
nious sounds, as those of human voices, and other sounds 
resembling those of the fife, drum, trumpet, etc., have 
been produced without any visible agency. Fourthly, all 
the functions of the human body and mind are influenced 
in what appear to be certain abnormal states of the system, 
by causes not yet adequately understood or accounted for. 
The occult force, or invisible power, frequently interrupts 
the normal operations of the faculties, suspending sensa- 
tion and voluntary motion of the body to a death-like 
coldness and rigidity, and diseases hitherto considered 
incurable, have been entirely eradicated by this mysterious 
agency. The petitioners proceed to state that two 
opinions prevail with respect to the origin of these phe- 
nomena. One ascribes them to the power and intelligence 
of departed spirits operating upon the elements which 
pervade all natural forms. The other rejects this con- 
clusion, and contends that all these results may be 
accounted for in a rational and satisfactory manner. 

The memorialists, while thus disagreeing as to the 
cause, concur in the opinion as to the occurrence of the 
7* 



154 THE SUPREME AUDACITY OF FRAUD. 

alleged phenomena ; and in view of their origin, nature 
and bearing upon the interests of mankind, demand for 
them a patient, rigid, scientific investigation, and request 
the appointment of a scientific commission for that pur- 
pose. 

I have now given a faithful synopsis of this petition, 
which, however unprecedented in itself, has been pre- 
pared with singular ability, presenting the subject with 
great delicacy and moderation. I make it a rule to pre- 
sent any petition to the Senate, which is respectful in its 
terms ; but having discharged this duty, I may be per- 
mitted to say that the prevalence of this delusion at this 
age of the world, among any considerable portion of our 
citizens, must originate, in my opinion, in a defective 
system of education, or in a partial derangement of the 
mental faculties, produced by a diseased condition of the 
physical organization. I cannot, therefore, believe that 
it prevails to the extent indicated in this petition. 

Different ages of the world have had their peculiar 
delusions. Alchemy occupied the attention of eminent 
men for several centuries ; but there was something sub- 
lime in alchemy. The philosopher's stone, or the trans- 
mutation of base metals into gold, the elixir vitm, or 
' water of life/ which would preserve youth and beauty, 
and prevent old age, decay and death, were blessings 
which poor humanity ardently desired, and which 



THE SUPREME AUDACITY OF FRAUD. 155 

alchemy sought to discover by perseverance and piety, 
Eoger Bacon, one of the greatests alchemists and greatest 
men of the thirteenth century, while searching for the 
philosopher's stone, discovered the telescope, burning 
glasses, and gunpowder. The prosecution of that delu- 
sion led, therefore, to a number of useful discoveries. In 
the sixteenth century nourished Cornelius Agrippa, 
alchemist, astrologer, and magician, one of the greatest 
professors of hermetic philosophy that ever lived. He 
had all the spirits of the air and demons of the earth 
under his command. Paulus Jovious says that the devil, 
in the shape of a large black dog, attended Agrippa 
wherever he went. Thomas Nash says, at the request of 
Lord Surrey, Erasmus, and other learned men, Agrippa 
called up from the grave several of the great philosophers 
of antiquity, among others, Sully, whom he caused to 
deliver his celebrated oration for Roscius, to please the 
emperor, Charles IV. He summoned David and King 
Solomon from the tomb, and the Emperor conversed with 
them long upon the science of government. This was a 
glorious exhibition of spiritual power, compared with the 
insignificant manifestations of the present day. I will 
pass over the celebrated Paracelsus, for the purpose of 
making allusion to an Englishman, with whose veracious 
history every one ought to make himself acquainted. In 
the sixteenth century, Dr. Dee made such progress in the 



156 THE SUPREME AUDACITY OF FRAUD. 

talismanic mysteries, that he acquired ample power to 
hold familiar conversation with spirits and angels, and 
to learn from them all the secrets of the universe. On 
the occasion, the angel Uriel gave him a black crystal of 
a convex form, which he had only to gaze upon intently, 
and by a strange effort of the will, he could summon any 
spirit he wished, to reveal to him the secrets of futurity. 
Dee, in his veracious diary, says that one day while he 
was sitting with Alburtus Laski, a Polish nobleman, 
there seemed to come out of the oratory a spiritual crea- 
ture, like a pretty girl of seven or nine years of age, with 
her hair rolled up before and hanging down behind, 
with a gown of silk, of changeable red and green, and 
with a train. She seemed to play up and down, and to 
go in and out behind the books, and as she seemed to get 
between them, the books displaced themselves and made 
way for her. This I call a spiritual manifestation of the 
most interesting and fascinating kind. Even the books 
felt the fascinating influence of this spiritual creature ; 
for they displaced themselves and made way for her. 
Edward Kelly, an Irishman, who was present, and who 
witnessed this beautiful apparition, verifies the doctor's 
statement ; therefore it would be unreasonable to doubt 
a story so well attested, particularly when the witness was 
an Irishman. Dr. D. was the distinguished favorite of 
kings and queens, a proof that spiritual science was in 



THE SUPREME AUDACITY OF FRAUD. 157 

high repute in the good old age of Queen Elizabeth. 
Bat of all the professors of occult science, hermetic phil- 
osophy or Spiritualism, the Kosicrucians were the most 
exalted and refined. With them the possession of the 
philosopher's stone was to be the means of health and 
happiness, an instrument by which man could command 
the services of superior beings, control the elements, defy 
the abstractions of time and space, and acquire the most 
intimate knowledge of all the secrets of the universe. 
These were objects worth struggling for. The refined 
Rosicrucians were utterly disgusted with the coarse, 
gross, sensual spirits who had been in communication 
with man previous to their day ; so they decreed the 
annihilation of them all, and substituted in their stead, 
a race of mild, beautiful and beneficent beings. 

The " spirits" of the olden time were a malignant 
race, and took especial delight in doing mischief ; but 
the new generation is mild and benignant. These 
"spirits," as this petition attests, indulge in the most 
innocent amusements and harmless recreations, such as 
sliding, raising and tipping tables, producing pleasing 
sounds and variegated sights, and sometimes curing 
diseases which were previously considered incurable ; 
and for the existence of this simple and benignant race 
our petitioners are indebted to the brethren of the rosy 
cross. Among the modern professors of Spiritualism, 



158 THE SUPREME AUDACITY OF FRAUD. 

Cagliostro was the most justly celebrated. In Paris, his 
saloons were thronged with the rich and noble. To old 
ladies he sold immortality, and to the young ones he 
sold beauty that would endure for centuries, and his 
charming countess gained immense wealth, by granting 
attendant sylphs to such ladies as were rich enough to 
pay for their services. The " Biographies des Contem- 
porains," a work which our present mediums ought to 
consult with care, says there was hardly a fine lady in 
Paris who would not sup with the shade of Lucretius in 
the apartments of Cagliostro. There was not a military 
officer who would not discuss the art with Alexander, 
Hannibal or Caesar, or an advocate or counselor who 
would not argue legal points with the ghost of Cicero. 
These were spiritual manifestations worth paying for, 
and all our degenerate " mediums " would have to hide 
their diminished heads in the presence of Cagliostro. 

It would be a curious inquiry to follow this occult 
science through all its phases of mineral magnetism, 
animal mesmerism, etc., until we reach the present, 
latest and slowest phase of all spiritual manifestation ; but 
I have said enough to show the truth of Burk's beautiful 
aphorism, " The credulity of dupes is as inexhaustible as 
the invention of knaves." 

A writer of that time says : 



THE SUPREME AUDACITY OF FRAUD. 159 

" A pleasant debate followed. Mr. Petit pro- 
posed to refer the petition of the Spiritualists to 
three thousand clergymen. Mr. Weller proposed 
to refer it to the Committee on Foreign Relations, 
as it might be necessary to inquire whether or not 
when Americans leave this world they lose their 
citizenship. Mr. Mason proposed that it should 
be left to the Committee on Military affairs. 
General Shields himself said he had thought of 
proposing to refer the petition to the Committee 
on Post Offices and Post Roads, because there 
may be a possibility of establishing a spiritual 
telegraph between the material and spiritual 
worlds. The petition was finally, by a decisive 
vote, laid upon the table. The table did not, as 
we learn, tip in indignation at this summary dis- 
posal of Spiritualism in the Senate, by which we 
must infer that the ' spirits,' if there were any 
in the Senate at that time, endorsed its action and 
considered the same all right." 

I might here enter into a description of the 
various forms of modern spiritualistic representa- 



160 THE SUPREME AUDACITY OF FRAUD. 

tions. It would be a waste of time. I wish, 
however, to allude more particularly just here to 
one of the u evidences" which Mrs. Ann Leah 
Underhill apparently values most highly in con- 
nection with the claim of inherent and herditary 
" mediumistic " powers residing in certain individ- 
uals and families. This is the somewhat noted 
so-called exhibition of u mediumistic " ability 
by a child of Mrs. Kate Fox Jencken, a babe, 
only about six weeks old at the time that it 
began. It is needless to go into all the details of 
the wonders attributed to little " Ferdie" Jencken, 
now a fine lad of fifteen, which rest wholly upon 
the testimony of persons who were interested in 
magnifying them to the greatest extent. Shad- 
owy forms are said to have appeared to his nurse 
while she was watching him. At three months 
he was said to have articulated "Mamma!" 
But the cap of the climax is the feat he is said to 
have performed when not six months old. As he 
was restless one day, his mother gave him a piece 
of blotting paper and a pencil to play with. He 



THE SUrEEME AUDACITY OF FRAUD. 161 

made some marks on the paper and dropped it. 

When his mother picked it up she exclaimed to 

Mrs. Underhill, the only other person present : 
" See here, he was written something." 
It is pretended that on one side of the blotting 

paper was the message : 

" Grandma is here. 

"Boysie." 

Later and up to the close of his first year, lie 
was said to write other messages, but all under 
like circumstances. 

Mrs. Underhill lays great stress upon these 
" manifestations " in two portions of her work. 

The simple and only comment to be made upon 
them is, that Mrs. Catherine Fox Jencken now de- 
clares that they were fraudulent. The messages 
were in every case written upon the paper before it 
was placed in the baby's hands, the mother know- 
ing, of course, that a child a few months old would 
not retain anything very long in its grasp, that 
those who chanced to ba present would not observe, 



162 THE SUPREME AUDACITY OF FRAUD. 

unless previously warned, whether it; was wholly 
blank or not, and that the picking up of the paper 
from the floor would give ample opportunity to 
turn undermost the side on which the child may 
have really scratched some unmeaning marks. 

So much for that and kindred marvels of 
infant " mediumship. " 

"Ferdie" Jencken, so far as is known, has 
never, since that early period of his existence, ex- 
hibited any "mediumistic power." 

The character of the communications purport- 
ing to come from the "spirit-land" has always 
been such as to condemn them, even.if nothing else 
would, in the mind of any one gifted with a clear 
judgment. How many have read with a bitter 
sneer those pretended words from "the great ones 
of the earth," which would place them, if they had 
really written or uttered them in the unseen life, 
on a mere level with the emptiest-headed mortals 
whom we know in this ! 

"Alas!" exclaims Nathaniel Hawthorne in 
"The Blythedale Romance," " methinks we 



THE SUPREME AUDACITY OF FRAUD. 1G3 

have fallen on an evil age ! If these phenomena 
have not humbug at the bottom, so much the 
worse for us. What can they indicate in a 
spiritual way, except that the soul of man is 
descending to a lower point that it has ever 
reached while incarnate? We are pursuing a 
downward course in the eternal march, and thus 
bring ourselves into the same range with beings 
whom death — in requital of their gross and evil 
lives— has degraded below humanity. To hold 
intercourse with spirits of this order, we must 
stoop and grovel in some elements more vile than 
earthly dust. These goblins, if they exist at all, 
are but the shadows of past mortality— mere 
refuse stuff, adjudged unworthy of the eternal 
world, and as the most favorable supposition, 
dwindling gradually into nothingness. The less 
we have to say to them, the better, lest we share 
their fate." 



164: A SCIENTIFIC JURY. 



CHAPTEE XII. 



A SCIENTIFIC JURY. 



At one period of her strange career, Mrs. 
Kane entered the service of Mr. Henry Seyberfc, 
the famous and wealthy spiritualist of Philadel- 
phia, who proposed to found what he called a 
" Spiritual Mansion." 

Mrs. Kane's salary and appointments were 
libera], and her situation was one which would 
have met the fondest wishes of many noted and 
ambitious " mediums." She was the high priest- 
ess of this new temple of the unseen entities, and 
as such she was honored and treated with most 
exalted respect. 

The conditions of the " Spiritual Mansion" 
were in all respects favorable to the intercourse 



A SCIENTIFIC JURY. 165 

of dwellers in the flesh with those who inhabit 
the realm of shadows, if such there had been. 

The taking up of her abode in this singular 
institution was one of her earliest steps, after the 
throwing oil of her deep weeds of mourning, 
worn in memory of the untimely termination of 
her dream of happiness. It was then that she 
found that the professional life of a " medium" 
was the only refuge left her from the cruel pur- 
suit of poverty and want. 

But her stay in the "Spiritual Mansion" was 
short. She had thought that the quiet existence 
afforded her there would be preferable to the 
daily and distasteful practice of public " medium- 
ship," which she must have resorted to at once, 
had she not accepted the proposition of Mr. Sey- 
bert. But the hypocrisy unconsciously required 
of her by him, while of a more fantastic descrip- 
tion, was altogether too much for her to endure. 
Her intense hatred of her profession as a 
"medium" appeared in a strong light to those 
who were then in her confidence. 



166 A SCIENTIFIC JUSY. 

Mrs. Kane, at the " Spiritual Mansion," not 
only produced pretended messages from the 
departed friends of her patron, but also from 
nearly every martyr and saint in the Protestant 
calendar, and from the famous sages and rulers 
of old. But her imposture stopped short of 
actual sacrilege. Beyond that line she never has 
gone. 

When it came to transmitting messages 
demanded by the living of the apostles and 
fathers of the church, she revolted against this 
mania for the supernatural and the impossible, 
and she refused to continue longer the instru- 
ment of pure religious insanity. 

She declined to produce " spirit rappings," as 
emanating from St. Paul, St. Peter, Elijah and 
the angel Gabriel. 

It has often been said that Henry Seybert 
had an undoubted vein of madness in his brain. 
Mrs. Kane herself so declares. I believe the 
same is true of every person (not a knave at 
heart) who persistently, after reason and con- 



A SCIENTIFIC JURY. 167 

scientious research have demonstrated the truth 
of the charges against Spiritualism, still refuses 
to be convinced. 

There was, however, a method in the madness 
of Seybert. Mrs. Kane has always been most 
careful not to make any positive asseveration of 
the claims of Spiritualism. Her guarded and, in 
some measure, candid course, no doubt tended 
very far towards influencing him to desire an 
honest and thorough investigation of the so-called 
spiritualistic phenomena, to be conducted accord- 
ing to the most rigid scientific methods. In his 
will, he left provision for the founding of a chair 
of philosophy in the University of Pennsylvania, 
with the careful stipulation that a certain portion 
of the income to be derived from the foundation 
should be devoted to the investigation of "all 
systems of morals, religion or philosophy which 
assume to represent the truth ; and particularly 
of modern Spiritualism." 

Thus this legacy gave birth to the celebrated 
"Seybert Commission," whose labors have re- 



168 A SCIENTIFIC JUKY. 

suited in the most valuable expose, prior to tliis 
present publication, of the fraudulent methods of 
Spiritualism — "the tricks of the trade," as it were 
— which has ever been made. 

Even the investigation of the remarkable 
"rappings," produced by Mrs. Kane, in which the 
Commission engaged — while less successful than 
any other branch of their researches — went so 
far as fully to convince them that these alleged 
manifestations were entirely fraudulent, and that 
they were produced by physical action on the 
part of the " medium," probably by or in the 
vicinity of her feet. 

This they were unable to prove, however, by 
any use of their five senses, which they were per- 
mitted to make. Mrs. Kane gave them no such 
chance of examination, on this occasion, as had 
"been vouchsafed to the Buffalo doctors some 
thirty-six years before, almost with the result of 
throttling Spiritualism in its infancy. No ; she 
was much too clever for that. She would greatly 
have preferred, to being ignomiuiously found out, 
to make a public and unreserved confession^ 



A SCIENTIFIC JURY. 169 

The fact is that no other scientific committee 
ever enjoyed the facilities of close observation of 
the production of the " raps " which were accorded 
to the " Buffalo doctors/' and that, up to this final 
day, when Mrs. Kane herself tells the truth, there 
has been not one single positive exposure of the 
primitive fraud of the "toe-knockings." Conjec- 
tures, it is true, have groped in that direction, 
time and again— but they never have done more 
than to grope. 

The members of the " Seybert Commission" 
were extremely eager to obtain sittings with Mrs. 
Kane, and were successful at an early stage of 
their studies in doing so. Mr. Horace Howard Fur- 
ness of Philadelphia was acting chairman of the 
Commission a good part of the time, and as such 
he wrote to Mrs. Kane in the following very 
urgent manner : 

"222 West Washington Square. 
"Dear Mrs. Kane : 

" I wrote to you some ten days ago, but, since I have 
not heard from you, fear that my letter has miscarried, 
and will therefore repeat it. 



170 A SCIENTIFIC JCJRY. 

"I am anxious, very anxious, that the 'Scybert 
Commission/ of which I am the chairman, should have 
an opportunity of investigating the 'Kappings.' Will 
you, therefore, appoint some day and hour, at your ear- 
liest convenience, when I can visit you in New York and 
make arrangements with you personally ? 

" I sincerely trust that your summer has been health- 
ful and peaceful, and beg to subscribe myself 
' e Yours respectfully, 

"Horace Howard Fur^-ess. 

" 22nd October, 1884/' 

Mrs. Kane became the guest of Mr. Furness at 
his house, and there produced the "rappings " at 
two seances, which were full of important signifi- 
cance. 

The first was on the 5th of November, 1884, 
in the evening. The company consisted of Dr. 
William Pepper and his wife, Dr. Joseph Leidy, 
Dr. George A. Koeing, Prof. Eobert Ellis Thomp- 
son, Mr. Horace Howard Furness, Mr. George S. 
Fullerton, Mr. Coleman Sellers, all, excepting the 
lady, members of the Commission, and Mr. 
George S. Pepper, Miss Logan, and the "medium." 



A SCIENTIFIC JUKY. 171 

All seated themselves around an open dining- 
fcable, Mrs. Kane at one end and Mr. Sellers at the 
other. The report of the Commission says : 

"The medium sat with her feet partly under 
the table, and consequently concealed from most 
of those present — her feet were hidden also by her 
dress." 

After the usual preliminaries of an introduc- 
tion to denizens of the "spirit land," the coul of 
Henry Seybert was announced. He declared 
through the " medium " that he knew the names 
of the members of the Commission, and particu- 
larly of the one who was addressing him. Mr. 
Sellers, who happened to be this person, requested 
the spirit to spell his name by the aid of a written 
alphabet, each letter of which was pointed to in 
turn, the letter intended by the "spirit" being 
indicated by three "raps." The result was that 
the name spelled out was the following : 

" CHARLES CEEI !" 

Without commenting upon this blunder of the 



172 A SCIENTIFIC JTJET. 

a spirit," the Commission encouraged Mrs. Kane 
to proceed. -She took a station at some distance 
from the table, her hands resting upon the back 
of a chair, and " raps " were heard which seemed 
to come from a point very near or under her. 
Again, when she stood close to a bookcase, " raps " 
were produced which she declared to proceed from 
the glass door upon which Mr. Sellers rested his 
hand. The latter felt not the slightest vibration 
of the glass. Mrs. Kane then produced written 
messages, addressed to two persons present, whose 
names she might have ascertained with very 
great ease. The writing was an irregular scrawl, 
running from the left, and leaning backward, and 
could only be read from the observe side by hold- 
ing the paper up to the light. 

The second seance in which Mrs. Kane acted 
as " medium " took place at the same place on the 
6th of November, ISSi. Dr. Leidy, Mr. Furness, 
Dr. Koeing, Mr. Fullerton and Mr. Sellers, mem- 
bers of the Commission, Mr. George S. Pepper, 
Mrs. Kane and a stenographer were present. The 



A SCIENTIFIC JURY. 173 

s -, 

experiments of this^evening were more lengthy 
and exhaustive than those of the previous one. 
For convenience of narration I shall divide them 
into two series : those made while the "medium" 
either stood upon the floor or sat upon an ordin- 
ary seat in an ordinary position ; those in which 
she was separated from the floor, either hy glass 
or by some object of considerable height, upon 
which she stood ; and those in which she pro- 
duced writing upon ordinary paper, said to have 
been dictated by the " spirits." The experiments 
did not always take place in the consecutive order 
in which I shall note them. 

The report says : "The ' spirit rappings ' during 
the evening, aside from those heard during the 
test with glass tumblers, were apparently confined 
to the floor space in the immediate vicinity of and 
directly beneath the table around which the 
company were seated." 

The stenographic report of this part of the 
investigation proceeds as follows : 

" Mr. Sellers. Is any spirit present now ? 



174 A SCIENTIFIC JURY. 

"Three raps — faint and partly distinct — are 
almost instantly audible. The raps apparently 
emanate from the floor-space directly beneath, or 
in the immediate vicinity of the table. This 
remark is applicable to all the ' rappings ' during 
the seance at the pine table. 

"The ' Medium' (interpreting the sounds). 
That was ' yes.' 

" Mr. Sellers (aside). They ; sounded like 
three. 

" The raps are immediately repeated with more 
distinctness. 

" Mr. Sellers (aside). There are three, and 
they are quite distinct. Is the spirit the same that 
was present last night ? 

" Three raps, apparently identical with those 
last heard, are again audible. 

" Mr. Sellers (aside). It says it is the same 
spirit. I presume then, that it is Henry Seybert ? 
(No response.) Is it Henry Seybert? 

"Three raps— distinct and positive. 

" Mr. Sellers. You promised last evening to 



A SCIENTIFIC JUKY. 175 

give a communication to Mr. Pepper. Are you 
able to communicate with him now ? 
"Two raps — comparatively feeble. 
"The 'Medium' (interpreting). One, two: 
that means not now. 

"Mr. Sellers (repeating). Not now? 
"The 'Medium' (reflectively). But probably 
before he leaves. 

" Three raps— quickly, distinctly and instantly 
given. 

"The 'Medium.' He said 'Yes, before he 
leaves.' (To Mr. Sellers.) You asked that ques- 
tion, I think ? 

"Mr. Sellers. Yes. Will you communicate 
with him before Mr. Pepper leaves to-night ? 

"Three raps — instantaneous, quick and vig- 
orous." 

Afterwards, the experiment of standing near 
a table, the "medium" not touching it, to see if 
sounds similar to those of the previous evening 
could be produced, was repeated. The "medium " 
insisted, however, that there should be no break- 



176 A SCIENTIFIC JURY. 

ing of the circle formed about her by those who 
were present. 

"All of the gentlemen, and the 'medium,'" 
says the report, "rise and remain standing. * * 

"The 'Medium.' This is test, something I 
have not gone through since I was a little child, 
almost. 

" Mr. Sellers (after an interval of waiting). 
There seem to be no raps. (Another short inter- 
val.) Now Mr. Seybert, cannot you produce 
some raps ? 

" Eighty seconds here elapse with no response, 
when the ' medium ' made an observation which 
was partly inaudible at the reporter's seat, the 
purport of which was that the ' spirit communi- 
cations ' are sometimes retarded or facilitated by 
a compliance by the listeners with certain condi- 
tions. Another interval of probably two minutes 
elapsed, when the ' medium ' suggested to Dr. 
Leidy to place his hands upon the table. The 
suggestion was complied with. 

"Mr. Sellers inquires of the ' medium ' whether 



A SCIENTIFIC JURY. 177 

a change in her position, with regard to the table, 
would do any good. 

" ' Medium.' I will change positions with you. 

" The change was made accordingly, but with- 
out result, and another period of waiting 
followed. 

"The ( Medium' (to Dr. Leidy). Suppose you 
ask some questions. You may have some friend 
who will respond. 

" Dr. Leidy. Is any spirit present whom I 
know, or who knows me ? 

"After a pause of ten seconds, three light 
raps are heard. 

" Dr. Leidy. Who am I ? 

' ' The ' medium ' explains that the responses 
by rappings are mainly indicative only of affirma- 
tion or negation. 

"Dr. Leidy. Will you repeat your taps to 
indicate that you are present yet ? 

" Three taps are heard. 

"Mr. Sellers. Those are very clearly heard. 
8* 



178 A SCIENTIFIC JURY. 

" The ' Medium ' (to Dr. Leidy). Ask if that 
is Mr. Seybert. 

" Dr. Leidy. Is Mr. Seybert present ? 

" Three raps — very feeble. 

"Dr. Leidy (to Mr. Sellers'! . Was there an 
answer to that ? 

"Mr. Sellers. There was. The answer was 
three raps. (After an interval, in which no 
response is received.) There seem to be no fur- 
ther communications." 

Later in the evening efforts to engage the 
defunct Mr. Seybert in conversation were again 
made. The company were as before gathered 
about the table. 6 ' Eaps " were made by Mrs. Kane 
on the floor. The " spirit " was asked if he knew 
the members of the Commission present, and to 
state their number. When it came to the 
response to the latter part of the question there 
were " seven slow, deliberate and distinct raps." 

Alas ! the "spirit" had mistaken the guest of 
the Commission, Mr. George S. Pepper, and the 
stenographers for members ! 



A SCIENTIFIC JURY. 179 

The latter were seated at a separate table. 

"Mr. Sellers. Are there seven members of 
the Committee present ? 

" Three raps. 

* ' Mr. Sellers. Are they all seated around 
one table ? 

" No response. About forty seconds elapse. 

"Mr. Sellers. Are they seated at two 
tables ? 

"Three raps — quite feeble. 

" Mr. Sellers (to his associates). We still 
must go back to the one thing. The information 
we receive through these responses is of little 
importance to us compared with the information 
which we must obtain as to whether these 
sounds are produced by a disembodied Spirit or 
by some living person ; that is, in deference to 
the ' Medium.' (To Mr. Furness.) Do you not 
think so ? 

" Mr. Furness is understood to assent. 

"Mr. Sellers. We have tried the glass 
tumblers. We have the sounds here. I would 



180 A SCIENTIFIC JURY. 

ask Mrs. Kane if it is proper for us to look below 
the top of the table at the time the sounds are 
being produced, and in such a way as to see her 
feet. 

"The ' Medium.' Yes, of course, you could 
do that, but it is not well to break, when you are 
standing, suddenly. As you know, you have to 
conform to the rules, else you will get no rap- 
pings. 

"Mr. Sellers. What are the rules ? 

"The ' Medium' (disconnectedly.) The rules 
are — every test condition, that I am perfectly 
willing to go through, and have gone through a 
thousand times — at the same time, there are 
times when you can break the rules. So slight 
a thing as the disjoining of hands may break the 
rules. I do not think the standing on the glass 
has been fully tried. 

" Mr. Sellers. We will try that later. 

"'Mr. Furness (to the ' medium,' informally). 
This investigation is one of great importance to 
us. There is no question about it— we have 



A SCIENTIFIC JURY. 181 

heard these curious sounds. Now as to whether 
they come from c spirits' or not— that would 
seem to be the very next logical step in our 
inquiry. I think you are entirely at one with us 
in every possible desire to have this phenomenon 
investigated. 

"The 'Medium.' Oh, certainly. But I 
pledge myself to conform to nothing, for — as I 
said in Europe — I do not even say the sounds are 
from ' splits f and, what is more, it is utterly 
beyond human power to detect them. / do not 
say they are the spirits of our departed friends, 
but 1 leave others to judge for themselves. 

"Mr. Furness. Then you have come to the 
conclusion that they are entirely independent of 
yourself. 

' ' The f Medium.' No, I do not knoiv that they 
are entirely independent of myself. 

"Mr. Furness. Under what conditions can 
you influence them ? 

"The response, which was partly inaudible at 
the reporter's seat, was understood to be : 'I 
cannot tell.' 



182 A SCIENTIFIC JURY. 

1 ' Mr. Furness. You say that in the generality 
of cases they are beyond your control ? 

"The 'Medium.' Yes. 

"Mr. Furness. How in the world shall we 
test that % 

" The ' Medium.' Well, by— 

"Mr. Furness. By— what ? Isolating you 
from the table ? 

"The ' Medium.' Yes. 

"Mr. Furness (applying his right hand, by her 
permission, to the ' Medium's ' head). Are you 
ever conscious of any vibration in your bones ? 

"The ' Medium.' No; but sometimes it 
causes an exhaustion, that is, under circum- 
stances when the raps do not come freely. 

" Mr. Furness. The freer the raps come, the 
better for you ? 

" The * Medium.' Yes, the freer the better— 
the less exhaustion. 

"Mr. Sellers. But do you feel now, to- 
night, any untoward influence operating against 
you? 



A SCIENTIFIC JURY. 183 

Ci The ' Medium.' No, not to-night, for it takes 
quite a little while before we feel these things. 

"Mr. Furness. Do these raps always have 
that vibratory sound— tr-rut— tr-rut— tr-rut \ 

" The ' Medium.' Sometimes they vary. 

"Mr. Furness. As a general rule I have 
heard them sound so. 

"The i Medium.' Every rap has a different 
sound. For instance, when the ' spirit ' of Mr. 
Seybert rapped, if the sound was a good one, you 
would have noticed that his rap was different 
from that of another. Every one is entirely dif- 
ferent from another. 

"Mr. Furness. Do you suppose that the 
present conditions are such that you can throw 
the raps to a part of the room other than that in 
which you are ? 

" The ' Medium.' I do not pretend to do that, 
but I will try to do it. 

" Mr. Furness and Dr. Leidy station themselves 
in the corner of the room, diagonally, and most 
remote from the pine table, at which their asso- 



184 A SCIENTIFIC JURY. 

dates remain seated, with their hands upon the 
table, and ' their minds intent on having the raps 
produced at the corner indicated,' as requested by 
the ' medium,' who also remains at the table. 
The ' medium ' asks, 'Will the " Spirit " rap at the 
other side of the room f and, after twelve seconds, 
and again after forty -three seconds, repeats the 
inquiry. No response is received. The experi- 
ment is repeated with Mr. Furness and Dr. 
Koenig at the corner, but with a like negative 
result." 

Let us now turn to the experiments made 
while the " medium" was not in a position in 
which her feet could touch the floor. The report 
says : 

"Mr. Sellers made this inquiry : 

"'It is proposed that the "medium" shall 
stand upon tumblers. Are we likely to have 
any demonstration V 

" Three raps— promptly given, though feeble 
in delivery and but faintly audible. 

" The ' Medium.' There were three— a kind of 
tardy assent. 



A SCIENTIFIC J DRY. 185 

"Mr. Sellers (to the 'Medium'). As if the 
' Spirits ' might or might not communicate ? 

" The ' Medium.' Well, that a trial might be 
made. 

' ' Three raps are here again distinctly heard — 
the characteristics of the sounds in this instance 
being rapidity and energy, or pcsitiveness. 

" The ' Medium.' That is a quick answer. 

"At this point, attention is directed to the 
first of a series of experiments with four glass 
tumblers, which are placed together, with the 
bottoms upward, on the carpeted floor, in the 
center of a vacant space. The ' medium ' stands 
directly upon these, the heels of her shoes resting 
upon the rear tumblers and the soles upon the 
front tumblers. The Committee co-operate with 
the ' medium,' and, in conformity with her sug- 
gestions, all the men clasp hands and form a 
semi-circle in front of the ' medium,' the hands 
of the latter being grasped by the gentlemen 
nearest to her on either side. 

"Mr. Sellers (after a notification from the 



186 A SCIENTIFIC JURY. 

medium to proceed). Is Mr. Seybert still pres- 
ent ? 

" No response. 

"The 'Medium.' It may be a few minutes 
before you will hear any rapping through these 
glasses. 

"Ten seconds elapse. 

" The ' Medium.' This test is a very satisfac- 
tory one, if they do it. And they have done it a 
hundred times. 

"Five seconds elapse. 

"The 'Medium' (to Mr. Furness). The 
glasses are not placed over the marble, are they ? 

"Mr. Furness. No, the floor is of wood. 

"Mr. Sellers (after another interval of wait- 
ing) informally remarked to Mr. Furness : ' We 
will wait probably for another minute to see if 
anything comes. As you know, the 'medium' 
claims that it is impossible for her to control 
these things — that she is merely one who is oper- 
ated through.' 

" Another interval expires. 



A SCIENTIFIC JURY. 187 

"The 'Medium.' That was a very faint; rap. 
Suppose we change the position of the glasses. 

"Note by the stenographer. No intimation 
is given that the rap here spoken of was heard by 
any one other than the ' medium ' herself. Pur- 
suant to the request just stated, the carpet is 
removed and the glass tumblers are located on the 
bare floor at a point about five feet distant from 
the place at which the test was first tried. The 
new location is in the center of a passage- way > 
about three feet in width, between a side-board 
on one side, and a wall projection on the other. 
Its selection is apparently, though not specific- 
ally, dictated by the position and movements of 
the ' medium.' The ' medium ' and the Commit- 
tee resume their positions, the former standing 
on the glasses and the gentlemen facing her in a 
group. 

" The ' Medium.' Now, Spirits, will you rap 
on the floor ? 

" Thirty seconds here elapsed with no 
response, when one glass was heard to click 



188 A SCIENTIFIC JURY. 

against the other, and the ' medium ' exclaimed 
' Oh !' 

" The ' Medium ' (repeating). Will you rap on 
the floor ? 

" Thirty seconds now elapse without any 
demonstration. 

"The 'Medium' (aside). It seems to be a 
failure. They have done it. 

" Another click of the glasses which passes 
without comment. 

" Mr. Sellers. Wo will have to set down the 
result of the experiment on glass tumblers as 
negative. It may be well to try it later. 

" The ' Medium ' (evidently reluctant to aban- 
don the test). Suppose now, as we have gone so 
far, we kind of form a chain. 

"The company retained their positions with 
hands joined, and the ' Spirits ' were repeatedly 
requested to make their presence known. Mr. 
Pepper, at the suggestion of the 'medium,' ask- 
ing the ' Spirit ' of his friend, Henry Seybert, to 
manifest its presence by one rap — but all efforts 
to elicit such response proved ineffectual. 



A SCIENTIFIC JURY. 189 

" When the same experiments were resumed, 
the lady proceeded to the space between the side- 
board and the wall, where the last preceding test 
had been made, and there the tumblers were 
again arranged. The ' medium ' resumed her 
position upon them, with Drs. Leidy and Koeing, 
and Messrs. Sellers and Furness facing her. 

" The ' Medium.' Will the Spirit rap here ? 

" Twenty-three seconds elapse. 

" Dr. Leidy. Is any ' Spirit ' present. 

" An interval of thirty-nine seconds here 
followed, when the attention of the Committee 
was momentarily diverted by an inquiry addressed 
to Mr. Furness by Mr. Sellers, viz. : Whether a 
glass plate of sufficient strength to bear the 
weight of the ' medium' was procurable. At 
this moment the ' medium ' suddenly exclaimed : 
' 1 hear a rap. You said, "Get a glass," and 
there was a rap.' 

"The 'Medium' (repeating for the information 
of Mr. Furness). Somebody proposed a glass and 
there were three raps. 



190 A SCIENTIFIC JUEY. 

"Dr. Koenig inquires of the - medium' 
whether the meaning intended to be conveyed by 
the sounds is that the ' spirits ' desire to have the 
glass plate produced. 

' ' The ' Medium.' I do not know. I know there 
were raps. (Turning to Mr. Sellers, the ' medium ' 
adds :) They may have been made by your heel 
on the floor, but certainly there were sounds. 

"Mr. Fulleeton. Then it was not the regular 
triple rap ? 

' k The 'Medium.' I could not tell. 

"Just before calling attention to the alleged 
rap or raps, the ' medium ' grasped with her right 
hand the wood- work of the side-board, as if for 
support. It was then that she stated she heard 
the sounds. They were apparently not heard by 
any one but the ' medium.' 

"Mr. Sellers (addressing the 'spirit 1 ). Will 
you repeat the raps we heard just now, assuming 
that there were some ? 

" Ten minutes elapse without a response. 

" The ' Medium.' There is no use of my stand- 



A SCIENTIFIC JURY. 191 

ing any longer, for when they come at all, they 
come right away. 

"Mr. Sellers (after scrutinizing the position of 
one of the feet of the ' medium '). The edge of 
the heel of the shoe rests on the back tumbler. 
(Assuming a stooping posture for a more pro- 
longed scrutiny.) We will see whether the raps 
will be produced now. 

"The ' medium ' now proposes that all the 
members of the committee shall stand up and 
join hands. 

"Mr. Sellers and his associates accordingly 
stand, facing the 'medium,' with hands joined. 
Changes in their positions were made by some of 
the gentlemen from time to time, as suggested by 
the 'medium,' Mr. Pepper and Dr. Koenig being 
the first to exchange places. This occurred after 
a silence of thirty seconds, without any response. 

"The 'Medium.' Now, Mr. Seybert, if your 
'spirit' is here, will you have the kindness — I 
knew Mr. Seybert well in life— to rap ? 

" Fifteen seconds elapse. 



192 A SCIENTIFIC JURY. 

"The ' Medium.' No, he does not seem to 
respond. 

"At the suggestion of Mr. Sellers, all of the 
gentlemen approach the * medium' for the pur- 
pose of inducing some acknowledgment by the 
'spirit,' and inquiries similar to those already 
stated are repeated without result. 

"The Commission temporarily abandon the 
test. When the tumblers are again produced the 
c medium' takes her position upon them, with 
Mr. Fullerton standing next to her upon the right 
and Mr. Furness to the left. Mr. Sellers remains 
for some moments kneeling on the floor to enable 
himself better to hear any sounds that may be but 
faintly audible. The ' spirits' are repeatedly 
importuned by the 'medium' to produce the 
'rappings,' but no response is heard until the 
company is about to abandon the experiment. 
Three raps are then audible. The raps are very 
light, but very distinct. 

" Mr. Fullerton states that he heard the raps. 

" Mr. Sellers. I heard a sound then, but it 



A SCIENTIFIC JUKY. 193 

seemed as if it was around there. (Indicating the 
wall immediately in the rear of the ' medium.') 

" The tumblers are here moved further away 
from the wall, and the ' medium' resumes her 
position upon them. 

"Mr. Sellers. Will the ' Spirit 'rap again? 
(No response.) 

" The ' Medium.' Were any of you gentlemen 
acquainted with Mr. Seybert in his lifetime ? 

" Mr. Fullertox. I saw him several times be- 
fore his death. If he can give an intimation now 
of anything he said at that time, it will indicate 
that he remembers it. 

" A very faint rap is heard. 

" The 'Medium.' There is a rap. It seems to 
be there again. (Indicating the spot to which 
attention was previously called by Mr. Sellers.) 

"The 'medium' again importunes, first, 'Mr. 
Seybert,' and next the 'spirits,' to rap ; and the 
importunities are repeated. Three raps are dis- 
tinctly, but faintly heard. 



194: A SCIENTIFIC JURY. 

" Mr. Sellers. I heard them. They sounded 
somewhat like the others, not exactly. 

"The 'Medium.' I heard one rap, but it is 
nothing for me to hear them ; I want you gentle- 
men to hear them. 

"Mr. Sellers. Probably we will hear them 
again. 

"While Mr. Sellers and Mr. Furness are con- 
versing, several raps are heard, though less distinct 
than the preceding ones. 

"The * Medium.' There they are, as though 
right under the glass. (After a silence of forty 
seconds) Now I hear them again, very light — oh, 
very light. 

"Mr. Furness, with the permission of the 
6 medium,' places his hand upon one of her feet. 

"The ' Medium.' There are raps now, strong — 
yes, I hear them. 

" Mr. Furness (to the ' medium '). This is the 
most wonderful thing of all, Mrs. Kane; 1 dis- 
tinctly feel them in your foot. There is not a 
particle of motion in your foot, but there is an 
unusual pulsation. 



A SCIENTIFIC JURY. 195 

"Mr. Sellers here made some inquiries of the 
* medium,' concerning the shoes now worn by her. 
The replies, which were not direct, are here given. 

* ' Mr. Sellers. Are those the shoes which you 
usually wear ? 

" The i Medium.' I wear all kinds of shoes. 

" Mr. Sellers. Are the sounds produced in 
your room when you have no shoes on ? 

"The ' Medium.' More or less. They are 
produced under all circumstances. 

" Following the suggestion of the i medium,' 
all present proceed through an intervening 
apartment to the library, where the s medium' 
selects various positions — standing upon a lounge, 
then upon a cushioned chair, next upon a step- 
ladder, and finally upon the side of a book-case — 
but all with a like unsuccessful result, no response 
by ' rappings ' being heard. 

"In the midst of the experiments at the table 
Mrs. Kane exclaimed to Mr. Sellers : Well, my 
hand does feel like writing. Will you give 
me a piece of paper ? and, maybe they will give 
me some directions. 



196 A SCIENTIFIC JURY. 

"Mr. Fullerton (to the ' medium'). How 
does your hand feel when affected in that way ? 

" The ( Medium.' It is a peculiar feeling, like 
that from taking hold of electrical instruments. 
I do not know but that you might possibly feel it 
in my hand. 

" The lady here extended her right hand upon 
the table toward Mr. Fullerton. The latter placed 
his left hand upon the, extended hand of the 
'medium,' and subsequently remarked that the 
pulsation of her wrist was a little above the 
ordinary rate. 

"The ' medium, ' ostensibly under ' spirit' 
influence, with lead-pencil in hand, proceeded to 
write two communications from the ' spirit' of 
the late Henry Seybert. The first of these 
covered two pages of paper of the size of ordinary 
foolscap. The 'medium' wrote in large charac- 
ters, with remarkable rapidity, and in a direction 
from the right to the left, or the reverse of ordin- 
ary handwriting. The writing, consequently, 
could be read only from the reverse side of the 



A SCIENTIFIC JURY. 197 

paper, and by being held up so as to permit the 
gaslight to shine through it. 

"The communications, as deciphered by Mr. 
Sellers, with the aid of Mr. Fullerton and the 
' medium,' were as follows : 

" You must not expect that I can satisfy you beyond 

all doubt in so short a time as you havG yet bad. I 

want to give you all in my power, and will do so if you 

will give me a cbance. You must commence right in 

the first place or you shall all be disappointed for a 

much longer time. Princiipis Obsta Sereo Medicina 

Paraium. 

" HENRY SEYBERT. 

" Mend the fault in time or we will all be puzzled. 

" HENRY SEYBERT." 

The fault in the Latin of the above quotation 
attracted the attention of the Commission. 

Mr. George S. Pepper, who had been well 
acquainted with Mr. Seybert in his lifetime, de- 
clared that he had never known any Latin at all! 

The investigations of the " Seybert Commis- 
sion " in other directions than that of the " rap- 
pings," were far more fascinating and productive 



198 A SCIENTIFIC JUKY. 

of results. It would be impossible to give an 
adequate idea of them here. The Commission 
employed the most celebrated " mediums" within 
their reach, and paid them liberally to place them 
in communication with the "Spirit world." 
They saw (and they show in their report that 
they did see) the secret of every " wonderful" 
thing done by the " mediums," and found it in 
most instances exceedingly simple, and generally 
rather clumsily performed. Professional jug- 
glers constantly outdo professional " mediums." 
This, the latter cannot deny, and they seek— oh, 
monumental impudence ! — to make people believe 
that jugglers are nothing more nor less than 
" mediums," and that " mediums " are never in 
any sense jugglers ! 

Thus the notorious Slade : 

" Mr. Sellers. Do you know a man named 
Kellar, who is exhibiting in this city ? 

"Dr. Slade. I do not. I never knew him. 

"Mr. Sellers. You may, however, be able 
to explain to me a very remarkable slate -writing 



A SCIENTIFIC JURY. 199 

experiment which Kellar has performed. (Mr. 
Sellers here describes at length Mr. Kellar's trick 
with the fastened slates.) How did Mr. Kellar do 
that? 

"Dr. Slade. He is a ' medium.' He does 
that work precisely as I do it. 

"Mr. Sellers. But can he not do it by 
trickery ? 

"Dr. Slade. No, it is impossible. He is a 
' medium ' and a powerful ' medium.' " 

This is from a memorandum of Mr. Sellers. 
He says further : 

"The inquiry was then addressed to Mr. 
Slade : Do you know a man named Guernilla, 
who, with his wife, gave seances ? 

" Mr. Slade. Yes, I know him very well. 

"Mr. Sellers. "Well, how does he perform 
his wonderful exploits in ' Tappings,' etc. ? 

"Mr. Slade. He is a ' medium,' a powerful 
1 medium. ' I know him very well indeed. I 
can assure you that all he does is done solely by 
means of his mediumistic powers. 



200 A SCIENTIFIC JUEY. 

"I now state to the Committee that the 
Guernillas exhibited in Philadelphia some years 
ago as exposers of Spiritualism. They did not 
expose it, but they performed experiments which, 
prior to that time, were said to have been accom- 
plished by the aid of 'spirits.' Guerniha him- 
self, at my house, in my presence, in broad day- 
light, performed all the feats and exhibited the 
phenomena that were produced at the dark and 
other seances, and he repeated them until I 
myself became as expert as he in performing 
them ; for which I paid him a consideration. So 
much for the mediumistic power." 

Mr. Sellers explained with reference to Mr. 
Kellar : 

" I pause here for the express purpose of hav- 
ing the fact noted that, being thoroughly familiar 
with the details of the methods of those experi- 
ments, I can positively assure the Committee that 
there is no mediumistic power in Mr, Kellar, so 
far as his methods are concerned, that those 
methods are as easy of solution as are any other 
physical problems." 



THE UNALTERABLE VERDICT. 201 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE UNALTERABLE VERDICT. 

The "Seybert Commission"* examined every 
known form of spiritualistic manifestation to 
which they had access, and implicitly under con- 
ditions imposed by the " mediums" themselves. 
These conditions are everything that could be 
devised and plausibly used to prevent the hoped- 
for dupe from detecting the fraud that is practised 
upon him. 

The Commission put the indelible stamp of 
fraud upon all so-called spiritualistic manifesta- 
tions. Of the " spiritual rappings " they say : 

" To the subject of c spirit-rappings' we have 
devoted some time and attention, but our investi- 

* " The Seybert Commission on Spiritualism," J. B. Lippin- 
cott Company, Philadelphia, 1887. The author is under obliga- 
tions to the publishers of this volume, for material which he has 
taken from it. 
9* 



202 THE UNALTERABLE VERDICT. 

ga tions have not been sufficiently extensive to 
warrant us at present in offering any positive con- 
clusions. The difficulty attending the investiga- 
tion of this mode of spiritualistic manifestation is 
increased by the fact, familiar to physiologists, 
that sounds of varying intensity may be produced 
in almost any portion of the human body by 
voluntary muscular action. To determine the 
exact location of this muscular activity is at times 
a matter of delicacy. 

"What we can say thus far, with assurance, 
is that, in the cases which have come under our 
observation, the theory of the purely physiological 
origin of the sounds has been sustained by the 
fact that the 'mediums' were invariably, and 
confessedly, cognizant of the Wrappings' when- 
ever they occurred, and could at once detect any 
spurious 'rappings,' however exact and indistin- 
guishable to all other ears might be the imita- 
tion." 

Mrs. Kane has expressed amusement over the 
manner in which she eluded the inquisitions of 



THE UNALTERABLE VERDICT. 203 

the grave and conscientious Commission and left 
them puzzled over the " rappings." 

Even then, however, she cared so little for the 
preservation of the secret, that when she declined 
to be further examined by the Commission, she 
admitted to Mr. Furness that the gentlemen had 
ample ground for looking upon the manifestations 
which she had given as unsatisfactory. Mr. Fur- 
ness says : 

" I told her that the Commission had now had 
two seances with her, and that the conclusion to 
which they had come is that the so-called raps are 
confined wholly to her person, whether produced 
by her voluntarily or involuntarily they had not 
attempted to decide ; furthermore, that although 
thus satisfied in their own minds they were 
anxious to treat her with all possible deference and 
consideration, and accordingly had desired me to 
say to her that if she thought another seance 
with her would or might modify or reverse their 
conclusion, they held themselves ready to meet 
her again this evening and renew the investigation 



204: THE UNALTERABLE VERDICT. 

of the manifestations ; at the same time I felt it 
my duty to add that in tkat case the examination 
would necessarily be of the most searching 
description. 

"Mrs. Kane replied that the manifestations at* 
both seances had been of an unsatisfactory 
nature, so unsatisfactory that she could not really 
blame the Commission for arriving at their con- 
elusion. In her present state of health she really 
doubted whether a third meeting would prove 
any better than the two already held. It might 
even be more unsatisfactory, and instead of 
removing the present belief of the Commission it 
might add confirmation of it. In view of these 
considerations, she decided not to hold another 
seance." 

Mrs. Kane declares that with her muscles 
and the joints of her toes so educated by long 
practice, and her ability to produce the noise of 
"ra.ps" with no perceptible movement, she could 
have gone on deceiving the world indefinitely with- 



THE UNALTERABLE VERDICT. , 205 

out being detected. She explains that the mak- 
ing of the " raps," when she is stationed on glass 
tumblers, requires a far greater effort than when 
her feet are in contact with the carpet or floor. 
The shock must in that case be conveyed through 
a comparatively non-conducting substance. For 
this reason, when the floor was especially hard or 
thick and lacking in sonorousness, she sometimes 
failed in the expected effect. In every instance, 
it was most difficult to produce the "raps" under 
those circumstances. 



The verdict, however, is now complete. Spirit- 
ualism is guilty. 

The court of mankind so declares it. 



IV. 

REPENTANCE, 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE HEART PLEADS FOR THE SOUL. 

The most interesting feature, after all, of Mar- 
garet Fox's career, was perhaps that sad and 
abortive romance of which Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, 
the gallant Arctic explorer, was the hero. This 
history should be known to the reader in order 
that the exact aspect of Spiritualism to her devel- 
oped conscience in after years may be understood. 

Dr. Kane first saw Maggie Fox in the autumn 
of 1852, when she was staying with her mother 
at a hotel in Philadelphia, being then engaged in 
" spiritualistic manifestations." Dr. Kane, whose 
heart had never before been touched, at once 
succumbed to the sweet charm of this erratic 
child, and conceived the romantic idea of remov- 
ing her from the life she then was leading, edu- 

[209] 



210 THE HEART PLEADS FOR THE SOUL. 

eating her and marrying her. The project, when 
it became known, awakened the bitter hostility 
of his friends, and from this hostility, the unfor- 
tunate separation between them which it caused, 
and Dr. Kane's untimely death, all of the sorrow 
that afterwards engulfed her life and deprived 
her of the ambition for a nobler career, directly 
sprang. 

Margaret was but thirteen years old when Dr. 
Kane first saw her. A friendly hand* has thus 
traced her portrait : 

( ' Her beauty was of that delicate kind which 
grows on the heart, rather than captivates the 
sense at a glance ; she possessed in a high degree 
that retiring modesty which shuns rather than 
seeks admiration. The position in which she was 
placed imposed on her unusual reserve and self- 
control, and an ordinary observer might not have 
seen in her aught to make a sudden impression. 
But there was more than beauty in the charm 

*The author of " The Love-Life of Dr. Kane ;" published by 
Carleton, 1865, New York. 



THE HEART PLEADS FOR THE SOUL. 211 

about her discerned by the penetrating eyes of 
her new acquaintance. The winning grace of her 
modest demeanor, and the native refinement 
apparent in every look and movement, word and 
tone, were evidences of a nature enriched with all 
the qualities that dignify and adorn womanhood ; 
of a soul far above her present calling, and those 
who surrounded her. To appreciate her real 
superiority, her age and the circumstances must 
be considered. She was yet a little child — untu- 
tored, except in the elements of instruction to be 
gained in country district schools, when it was 
discovered that she possessed a mysterious 
power,* for which no science or theory could 
account. This brought her at once into notoriety 
and gathered around her those who had a fancy 
for the supernatural, and who loved to excite the 
wonder of strangers. Most little girls would 

* This form of expression was here used because the author 
of "The Love-Life," while not a believer in Spiritualism, did 
not wish to imply in a work that had Mrs. Kane's personal 
sanction, the slightest doubt of the sincerity of her professions or 
of her claims as a " medium." 



212 THE HEART TLEADS FOR THE SOUL. 

have been spoiled by that kind of attention. The 
endurance of it without having her head turned, 
argued rare delicacy, simplicity and firmness of 
character. After exhibitions given in different 
cities, to find herself an object of public attention, 
and of flattering notice from persons of distinc- 
tion, would naturally please the vanity of a beau- 
tiful young girl ; and it would not be surprising if 
a degree of self-conceit were engendered. But 
Margaret was not vain, and could not be made 
self -conceited. If she had any consciousness of 
her exquisite loveliness, — if it pleased her to 
possess pretty dresses and ornaments— her delight 
was that of a happy child taking pleasure in 
beautiful things, without reference to any effect 
they might enable her to produce. Perhaps no 
young girl ever lived more free from the least idea 
of coquetry or conquest. She heeded not the 
expressions of admiration that reached her ear so 
frequently. She had seen enough of the world at 
this time to be aware of the advantages of a 
superior education, and it was the most ardent 



THE HEART PLEADS FOR THE SOUL. 213 

■wish of her heart to make herself a well-educated 
woman." 

Margaret showed a disposition to devote her- 
self with great industry to the acquirement of 
knowledge. In fact, at her first meeting with Dr. 
Kane, he found her conning over a French exer- 
cise in an interval of the public receptions which 
were given by herself and her mother. Dr. Kane 
easily enlisted her thoughts in a better and higher 
career. The deception which was required of her 
already appeared in something of its true light to 
her young mind, and she was restless under its 
abhorrent shackles. Dr. Kane's interest in her 
was certainly pure and elevated, and it led him to 
gloomy apprehensions of the fate of so fair, yet so 
misguided, a creature. He wrote in verse a 
prophecy that she would " live and die forlorn." 
There have been many times when the latter part 
of this warning seemed most likely to come true ; 
and that, doubtless, would have been her fate had 
she not found in a final renunciation of her past, 
a solace to her heart for the lack of that falsely 



214 THE HEART PLEADS FOE THE SOUL. 

won prosperity which had been hers during but 
brief intervals. 

Dr. Kane was but an indifferent versifier ; but 
some of the trifles in rhyme which he addressed 
to Margaret may well illustrate certain facts that 
I shall state at length hereafter. One day, he 
sent her " Thoughts that Ought to Be Those of 
Maggie Fox," the first refrain of which is as fol- 
lows : 

" Dreary, dreary, dreary, 

Passes life away, 
Dreary, dreary, dreary, 

The day 
Glides on, and weary 

Is my hypocrisy." 

At the close of the second stanza were these 
lines : 

" Happy as the hopes 

Which filled my trusting heart, 
Before I knew a sinful wish 
Or learned a sinful art." 



THE HEART PLEADS FOR THE SOUL. 215 

Again : 

" So long this secret have I kept 
I can't forswear it now. 
It festers in my bosom, 
It cankers in my heart, 
Thrice cursed is the slave fast chained 
To a deceitful art l" 

And last : 

" Then the maiden knelt and prayed : 

' Father, my anguish see ; 

Oh, give me but one trusting hope 

"Whose heart will shelter me ; 
One trusting love to share my griefs, 
To snatch me from a life forlorn ; 
That I may never, never, never, 
Thus endlessly from night to morn, 
Say that my life is dreary 
With its hypocrisy i " 

Among the first words that Dr. Kane spoke to 
Margaret were these : " This is no life for you, 
my child." As their reciprocal attraction grew 
stronger, he bent all of his deep influence over 
her in one direction, to effect once and for all her 
release from the fatal snare of deceit that fate had 



216 THE HEART PLEADS FOR THE SOUL. 

cast about her. Only a few weeks later we find 
him writing her a note from New York, in which 
he says : 

" Look at the Herald of this morning. There 
is an account of a suicide which causes some 
excitement. Your sister's* name is mentioned 
in the inquest of the coroner. Oh, how much I 
wish that you would quit this life of dreary same- 
ness and unsuspected deceit. We live in this 
world only for the good and noble. How crush- 
ing it must be to occupy with them a position of 
ambiguous respect !" 

Dr. Kane, a short time afterwards, described 
Maggie as follows : 

" But it is that strange mixture of child and 
woman, of simplicity and cunning, of passionate 
impulse and extreme self-control, that has made 
you a curious study. Maggie, you are very 
pretty, very childlike, very deceitful, but to me 
as readable as my grandmother's Bible." 

* Leah. 



THE HEART PLEADS FOR THE SOUL. 217 

"And again he saicl : " When I think of you, 
dear darling, wasting your time and youth and 
conscience for a few paltry dollars, and think of 
the crowds who come nightly to hear of the wild 
stories of the frigid North, I sometimes feel that 
we are not so far removed after all. My brain 
and your body are each the sources of attraction, 
and I confess that there is not so much differ- 
ence." 

Never for an instant did the manly and robust 
intellect of Dr. Kane stoop to the level of even a 
partial belief in the pretended wonders of " Spirit- 
itualism." The allusions made to it in his letters, 
when not grave or indignant, are full of a certain 
contemptuous playfulness, well calculated to 
reprove the conscious deceitfulness practised by 
the childish Maggie, while not offending the nat- 
ural pride which was yet a part of her imperfectly 
formed character. When the doctor was in Bos- 
ton, he wrote to her sister Katie : 

" Well, now for talk. Boston is a funny place, 
and ' the spirits ' have friends here. You would 



218 THE HEART PLEADS FOE THE SOUL. 

be surprised if I told you what I have heard. 
# * -x- There are some things that I have seen 
which I think would pain you. Maggie would 
only laugh at them ; but with me it gave cause 
for sadness. I saw a young man with a fine fore- 
head and expressive face, but a countenance 
deeply tinged with melancholy, seize the hand 
of this ' medium,' whose name — as I never tell 
other's secrets— I cannot tell you. He begged 
her to answer a question which I could not hear. 
Instantly she rapped, and his face assumed a pos- 
itive agony ; the rapping continued ; his pain 
increased ; I leaned forward, feeling an utter 
detestation for the woman who could inflict such 
torment ; but it was too late. A single rap came 
and he fell senseless in a fit. This I saw with 
my own eyes. 

" Now, Katie, although you and Maggie have 
never gone so far as this, yet circumstances must 
occur where you have to lacerate the feelings of 
other people. I know that you have a tender 
heart ; but practice in anything hardens us. You 



THE HEART PLEADS FOR THE SOUL. 219 

do things now which you would never have 
dreamed of doing years ago ; and there will come 
a time when you will be worse than Leah ; a 
hardened woman, gathering around you the vic- 
tims of a delusion. * * * The older you grow 
the more difficult it will be to liberate yourself 
from this thing. And can you look forward to a 
life unblessed by the affections, unsoothed by the 
consciousness of doing right ! * * * When 
your mother leaves this scene, can you and * * 
Maggie be content to live that life of constant 
deceit ?" 

To Maggie, Dr. Kane wrote from the sincerest 
depths of his heart, recalling the first moment 
when he saw her, " a little Priestess, cunning in 
the mysteries of her temple, and weak in every- 
thing but the power with which she played her 
part. A sentiment almost of pity stole over his 
wordly heart as he saw through the disguise." 

And again: "Waddy* called on me to-day, 
as did Tallmadge ;f I was kind to both for your 

* General Warldy Thompson, t Ex- Governor Tallmadge. 



220 THE HEART PLEADS FOR THE SOUL. 

sake. Waddy talked much about you. He said 
that he feared for you, and spoke long and well 
upon the dangers and temptations of your present 
life. I said little to him other than my convic- 
tions of your own and your sister's excellent 
character and 'pure simplicity f for thus, Mag, I 
always talk of you. And it pained me to find 
that others viewed your life as I did, and regarded 
you as occupying an ambiguous position. Depend 
upon it, Maggie, no right-minded gentleman — 
whether he be believer or sceptic — can regard 
your present life with approval. Let this, dear 
sweet, make you think over the offer of the one 
friend who would stretch out an arm to save you. 

Think wisely, dear darling, ere it be too late. 
# •* * 

" Maggie, you cannot tell the sadness that 
comes over me when I think of you. What will 
become of you ? you, the one being that I regard 
even before myself [ * * * 

"If you reahy can make up your mind to 



THE 1IEART PLEADS FOR THE SOUL. 221 

abjure the spirits, to study and improve your 
mental and moral nature, it may be that a career 
of brightness will be open to you ; and upon this 
chance, slender as it is, I offer, like a true friend, 
to guard and educate you. But, Mag, clouds, and 
darkness rest upon the execution of your good 
resolves ; and I sometimes doubt whether yon 
have the firmness of mind to carry them 
through." 

The author of " The Love-Life of Dr. Kane," 
says of this period : 

" Dr. Kane was very often in the habit of say- 
ing — as if with melancholy presentiment — ' What 
would become of you if I should die? What 
would you do ? I shudder at the thought of my 
death, on your account.' 

"In the buoyant confidence of youth, the poor 
girl could not then understand his fears. But he 
knew that in separating her from Spiritualism he 
was isolating her from all her friends and asso- 
ciates, and depriving her of the only means she 
possessed of earning a livelihood. In compensa- 



222 THE HEART PLEADS FOR THE SOUL. 

tion for the sacrifices required of her, he was giv- 
ing her a hope only ; a hope that might be bliss- 
fully realized, but might be sadly disappointed ; 
and in the event of losing him, what must be her 
destiny ! " 

Dr. Kane met with malignant opposition from 
Leah, Maggie's elder sister, in his efforts to 
detach her from the damning career into which 
she had been thrown. The " shekels" were then 
pouring in in great abundance at the seances, and 
this explains sufficiently the hostile attitude of 
the one person who was chiefly responsible for 
the ruin of her young life. Thus the doctor 
wrote to Maggie in New York : 

"Is the old house dreary to you? * * * 
Oh, Maggie, are you never tired of this weary, 
weary sameness of continual deceit f Are you 
thus to spend your days, doomed never to rise to 
better things ? — you and that dear little open- 
minded sister Kate (for she, too, is still unversed 
in deception) — are you both to live on thus for- 
ever ? You will never be happy if you do ; for 



THE HEART PLEADS FOR THE SOUL. 223 

you are not, like Leah, able to exult and take 
pleasure in the simplicity of the poor, simple- 
hearted fools around you. 

"Do, then, Maggie, keep to your last promise. 
Show this to Katie, and urge her to keep to her 
resolution."* 

By this time, Maggie had pledged herself to 
her lover to abandon the " rappings " altogether ; 
but they were both very cautious lest this resolu- 
tion should be known to her elder sister. Maggie 
appears to have yielded to the influences around 
her, in spite of her respect and regard for the 
doctor, and once or twice to have lapsed back into 
the ways that he dreaded and abhorred. We find 
him then, writing from New York to Washing- 
ton : 

"Don't rap for Mrs. Pierce. f Remember your 
promise to me. * * * 

* Katie, as well as her sister, had promised to abjure the 
" spirits," and she had also said that she would go to live with 
Maggie on the latter' s marriage with Dr. Kane. 

t The wife of the President of the United States. 



224 THE HEART PLEADS FOR THE SOUL. 

" Begin again, dearest Maggie, and keep your 
word. No ' rapping ' for Mrs. Pierce or ever more 
for any one. I, dear Mag, am your best, your 
truest, your only friend. What are they to my 
wishes ? Oh, regard and love me, and listen to 
my words ; and be very careful lest in an idle 
hour you lose my regard and your own respect." 

And later : 

" All last night did this good friend of yours 
think about you and your probable future. 

"I can see that this is one of the turning 
points of your life, and upon your own energy 
and decision now depend the success and happi- 
ness of your future career. Dear Maggie, think 
it over well and do not be turned aside from tvhat 
is right by the sincere but still misguided advice 
of others. * * * But remember, Maggie, that 
all this will not last. * * * What will it be 
when, looking back upon * * * misspent and 
dreary years, you feel that there have been no 
acts really acceptable to your Maker, and that for 



THE HEART PLEADS FOR THE SOUL. 225 

the years ahead, all will be sorrow, sameness and 
disgust ! * * * 

" Why, you know that sometimes, even now, 
when Leah is cross, or the company coarse and 
vulgar, or the day tiresome, or yourself out of 
sorts, that low spirits and disgust come over you 
and you long like a bird to spread your wings 
and fly away from it all." 

Very soon afterwards, Dr. Kane wrote : 

" At present, you have nothing to look for- 
ward to, nothing to hope for. Your life is one 
constant round of idle excitement. Can your 
mother, who is an excellent woman, look upon 
you, a girl of thirteen, as doomed all your life to 
live surrounded by such as now surround you, 
deprived of all the blessings of home and love and 
even self-respect ?" 

Dr. Kane, looking upon Margaret as his future 
wife, was exceedingly anxious that the true 
explanation of the " rappings," the fact that they 
were entirely fraudulent, should never be dis- 
covered. He hoped that Spiritualism would have 



226 THE HEART PLEADS FOR THE SOUL. 

but an ephemeral existence, and that when 
once it had died out, the public would so far for- 
get the persons who originated it, that it would 
cease to associate with them the woman who 
would then bear his name. So he wrote in this 
vein to Maggie : 

" You know I am nervous about the 'rap- 
pings.' I believe the only thing I ever was 
afraid of was this confounded thing being found 
out. I would not know it myself for ten thou- 
sand dollars." 

How both Margaret and Dr. Kane regarded 
the elder sister may be judged from this sentence, 
written by the latter at this time : " Be careful 
not to mention me before the Tigress." 

At last the object dearest to Dr. Kane's heart 
seemed to be drawing near to its accomplishment. 
He says : "Your kiud promise ' solemnly never 
to rap again ' so pleases me, that I cannot help 
thanking you. Adhere to that, and you will be a 
dear, good, happy girl." * * * 

Maggie went to school at Crook ville, near 



THE HEART PLEADS FOE THE SOUL. 227 

Chester, Pennsylvania, and was in charge of Dr. 
Kane's aunt, Mrs. Leiper, who resided near the 
house where Maggie lodged. Just prior to this, 
Dr. Kane wrote as follows : 

"Never do wrong any more ; for if now ' the 
spirits move ' it will be a breach of faith. From 
this moment, our compact begins." 

After Dr. Kane had reached the Arctic seas, I 
find this passage at the end of a long letter, full 
of solicitude and noble counsel about the educa- 
tion of his future wife: "One final wish— the 
only thing like restraint that your true friend can 
find it in his heart to utter : See little of Leah, 
and never sleep within her house." 

For a short time, on his return from his second 
Arctic voyage, Dr. Kane allowed himself to be 
swayed by interest and the vehement efforts of 
his relatives, so far as to require from Margaret a 
written declaration that they had never been 
engaged, and that she had no claim whatever 
upon his hand in matrimony. There was a 
quick reaction, however, and the old relations 



228 THE HEART PLEADS FOJK THE SOUL. 

were renewed. One who wrote of these facts 
said : Amid all his sorrow, one fear seemed to 
harass him perpetually — that Miss Fox might be 
induced to return to the professional life she had 
abandoned years ago for his sake. She was sur- 
rounded by spiritualists." * * 

In his letters to her, Dr. Kane still harped 
upon the one anxiety that continually possessed 
him. He says: "Do avoid 'spirits.' I can- 
not bear to think of you as engaged in a course 
of wickedness and deception. * * * Pardon 
my saying so ; but is it not deceit even to listen 
when others are deceived? * * * In 
childhood it was a mere indiscretion ; but what 
will it be when hard age wears its wrinkles into 
you, and like Leah you grow old! Dear Maggie, I 
could cry to think of it.* * A time will 

come when you will see the real ghost of mem- 
ory — an awful specter!" 

And again he wrote : "Maggie, 1 have but one 
thought, how to make you happier ; how to ivith- 



THE HEART PLEADS FOR THE SOUL. 229 

draw you from deception ; from a course of sin 
and future punishment, the dark shadow of which 
hung over you like the wing of a vampire." 

Then, as he claimed her more and more openly 
as his own, "he would not permit her," says the 
writer already quoted, "even to witness any 
spiritual manifestations, nor to remain in the 
room when the subject was discussed. * * * 
4 You never shall be brought in contact with such 
things again,' he would say." 

The ending of this very sad tale of love, 
which throws a peculiar light athwart the colder 
theme of this volume, was bitterly tragic. A 
secret marriage under the common law was 
entered into, and Dr. Kane, whose health was 
shattered never to be mended, went first to 
Europe and then to Cuba to die. Margaret and 
her mother were to join him at Havana, but ere 
their departure from New York he was already a 
corpse. 

And so, a noble and generous, if sometimes 
faltering heart, ceased to beat, and a gentle 



230 THE HEART PLEADS FOR THE SOUL. 

creature, who at last had learned to love as much 
as she had honored him, was on the shores of 
that deep sea of infamy against which, had he 
only lived, he would surely have shielded her. 



FROM SHADOW TO LIGHT. 231 



CHAPTER XV. 

FROM SHADOW TO LIGHT. 

More than thirty years after this sorrowful 
event, Margaret Fox Kane, in reviewing the past, 
attributes to the evil of Spiritualism all the ill- 
fortune which afterwards befell her. 

For fourteen years she wore the weeds of 
mourning for his sake ; but when at last they 
were torn from her by a friendly, though unwise 
hand, she drifted again, through the various 
phases of a worldly and dissipated life, to that 
very vocation of dreary mercenary deceit which 
he had predicted would be her lot. She was 
never happy afterwards, however, and he who 
possesses any true sensibility must at least pity, 
quite as much as he may condemn her unfortu- 
nate destiny, when he reads the sad avowals 
which are made in this volume. 



232 FROM SHADOW TO LIGHT. 

Mrs. Kane says at the present clay : 
" From the very first of our intimate acquaint- 
ance, Dr. Kane knew that the ' rappings ' which 
I practiced were fraudulent. Of course, he was 
too keen -sighted intellectually, too sensible, ever 
to have believed them genuine for a single 
instant ; and I simply obeyed the impulse of my 
candid regard for him, when the knowledge of 
his devotion grew upon me, and confided to him 
the whole secret of the fraud, together with my 
increasing repugnance to the life I was leading. 
He hated it, he despised it, he abhorred it, and he 
taught me from the beginning the same senti- 
ment. We had to combat with the sordid inter- 
est of others. Whatever good he accomplished 
for me, was done against the set purpose of Leah. 
" I do not exaggerate in any way when I say 
that I have feared that woman all my life. 
Remember, she is twenty -three years older than 
I am. Her influence over both myself and my 
sister Kate began when we were infants. Katie, 
even to this day, acknowledges some sinister 



FROM SHADOW TO LIGHT. 233 

i nfl lien ce about her sister Leah, even if she but 
chance to meet her in the street. It is a mixture 
of terrorism and cajolery. 

"For years I have had the shame of this vile 
thing before me. All my life, it has made me 
miserable. It is a load which I now throw off 
with a free heart and a great and thrilling sense 
of relief 

" You must know that it was a dark and hate- 
ful influence that kept me aloof from Dr. Kane 
so long, when he declared his true love for me, 
over and over again, and desired to rescue me 
from the evil by which I was surrounded. I gave 
him my whole heart in return, though at that 
time I did not know how deep and how tender 
was my love for him. 

"It is this same baleful influence which has 
been the nightmare of my existence. Every 
morning of my life on awaking, I have had this 
horrid thought before me. And even in those 
younger days I would brood and brood over it, 
and Dr. Kane would often say to me : 



234 FROM SHADOW TO LIGHT. 

" ' Maggie, I see the vampire is hovering over 
you still.' 

"Our whole family was at that time under 
bondage, as it were, to Ann Leah Brown. She 
ruled over us as with a rod of iron. 

"All through this dreadful life — from the time 
when I first realized its enormity — I protested 
against it. Dr. Kane, after our marriage, would 
never permit me to allude to my old career — he 
wanted me to forget it. He hated its publicity. 

" But when I was poor after his death, I was 
driven back to it. I have told my sister Leah 
over and again : ' Now that you are rich, why 
don't you save your soul ? But she would only fly 
into a passion. The truth is that nothing can 
excuse the work she has done. She entered upon 
it at the age of judgment and experience, fully 
aware of its falsity and evil effect. She knows 
that the world cannot forgive her, and I have no 
hope that she will ever confess her sin, or offer 
an atonement for it. 

" What can I add to the revelations of those 



FROM SHADOW TO LIGHT. 235 

letters ? They are proofs of the mutual knowledge 
of Dr. Kane and myself that the ' spiritual ' rap- 
pings ' were fraud, and nothing but fraud. And 
even if he had not been told of the fact by myself, 
his opportunities of observation in our household 
were unequaled by any granted to others, and 
his verdict would have been in any case, there- 
fore, almost as authoritative. 

"What fools are they who still pretend to 
believe against all this evidence ! 

" It would hardly seem necessary that I should 
denounce Spiritualism after all that others have 
said against it. 

"I have never in my life professed to be a 
spiritualist, and I have never believed in Spirit- 
ualism, although I have seen it in all its phases, 
some of which I am unable to produce myself. 

" Even when I was compelled to go back to 
the Wrappings' for a livelihood, and when I 
charged the most exorbitant fees, so that as few 
people as possible might be deceived, I had on my 



236 FROM SHADOW TO LIGHT. 

cards an emphatic disclaimer of any occult inspi- 
ration. 

Mrs. Kane at this point showed the following 
on the back of one of her cards : 



Mrs. Kane does not claim 
any Spirit power ; but people 
must judge for themselves. 



" My poor father and mother," she continued, 
"both knew before their death that all that we 
had practised for so many years was a fraud and 
a deception. Mother was greatly troubled about 
it, and she turned to the church for comfort. 
She used to say to us : 

" 'Oh, my dear children, I do hope that you 
will get out of this sort of life soon. 5 

" Peace be unto her !" 



The evil effects of Spiritualism upon the moral 
and mental condition of its followers is the deep- 



FROM SHADOW TO LIG-HT. 237 

est stain upon its history. The wrecks of thou- 
sands of intellects are monuments to its heartless 
fraud and malign influence. 

Mrs. Kane has often said that if in her late 
years she had wholly submitted herself to its 
foolish vagaries and its base temptations, she 
would undoubtedly be now a raving maniac. 

There are many who, if they would but speak 
truly, could declare that ruin of conscience, brain 
and health, has resulted either from their willing 
faith in flimsy illusions or their weak connivance 
in puerile deception. 

I have touched but little upon the unclean side 
of Spiritualism. Thousands upon thousands of 
virtuous men and women entertain its theory or 
hold to its faith. But the manipulators of the 
supernatural machinery, the members of the inner 
circle, the prestidigitateurs and clumsy magicians, 
who seek to make simpletons of mankind, I now 
accuse of the grossest practices and abominations, 
the loosest social ideas, the most utter absence of 



238 FROM SHADOW TO LIGHT. 

principle that has been exhibited by any one set 
of people in the nineteenth century. 

They are wholly corrupt, and there is no 
good in them. 

If Spiritualism in any form survives the blow 
now given it by Margaret and Catherine Fox, 
who were its creators, it will only be because of 
the veiled licentiousness introduced into it by 
those who have enlarged upon its original plan. 

This licentiousness, like the bruised serpent, 
will not down, but still will lift its head, and lurk 
amid deepest shadows. 

Spiritualism, however, cannot again deceive 
the world. 



And it is written : 

" The dead shall not return ; nor any that go 
down into Hell !" 



INDEX. 



INDEX. 



ABJURATION by Margaret Fox Kane of Spiritualism at the 

Academy of Music, New York, 65, 74. 
ADMISSIONS of Mrs. Leali Fox Fish regarding the results of 

the Buffalo medical investigation, 140, 144. 
AGASSIZ (Professor) investigates Spiritualism, 147. 
ANTICS of the Fox Children at Hydesville near Rochester, 83, 

87, 89, 96. 
ATTRACTIONS of the younger Fox Sisters, 129. 
AUDACITY (Imbecile) of spiritualistic imposters, 146.— 

(Supreme) of fraud, 150. 
AUTHORIZATION of the publication of this work by Margaret 

Fox Kane and Catherine Fox Jencken, 7. 
"BABY mediumship " — How the trick was done with the child 

of Mrs. Catherine Fox Jencken, 160. 
BELIEF in Spiritualism, — Mrs. Kane never pretended to an} r , 

167, 181, 236.— John D. Fox never had any, 99. 
"BOBBING" of apples on the floor in the Hydesville house, 

84, 90, 95. 
BOOMERANGS (Spiritualistic), 131. 
BROWN (Mrs. Ann Leah Fox),— Malignant opposition to Dr. 

Kane's efforts to detach her sister Maggie from Spiritual- 
ism, 222, 232.— Exulting in deception, 223.— Maggie 

warned against her by Dr. Kane, 227.— Sinister influence 

over her sisters, 232. 
'BUFFALO Doctors"— Their investigation of the "rappings," 

131. — Their correct theory, but wrong hypothesis, 131. — 

[241] 



24:2 INDEX. 

How their investigation if further pursued, would have 

led to the truth 133. 
" CHARLES Ceri"— The "spirit of Mr. Seybert " mistakes the 

name of Mr. Sellers, of the " Seybert Commission," 171. 
CLAIMS of Spiritualism as set forth in petition to Congress, 

1854, 151, 152. 
COMMITTEES of tools and accomplices, 121. 
CONDEMNATION of Spiritualism— The substantial effect of 

the report of Harvard professors on the tests in Boston, 

1857, 149. 
CONCERTED signals used in the early seances, 127. 
CONSPICUOUS persons interested in the "Fox Sisters," 129. 
CONTACT of person while producing the "raps," 90, 138. 
CORRUPT practices in secret spiritualistic circles, 50, 64, 237. 
COVENTRY (Dr. C. B.), one of the Buffalo investigators, 132. 
CROOKVILLE, near Philadelphia— Maggie Fox goes to school 

there, 226. 
DEAD (The) do not return, 37, 238. 
DEATH of Dr. Kane, 37. 
DERANGEMENT of mental faculties the cause of the prevalence 

of the spiritualistic delusion, 154. — Resulting from 

Spiritualism, 166. 
DISGUST (Dr. Kane's) at spiritualistic circles, 225, 229.— (Mrs. 

Kane's) at the baser spiritualistic practices, 29, 30. 
DISS De Bar (Madam) — Mrs. Kane's abhorrence of her, 29. — Dan- 
iel Underbill pronounces her a fraud, 43. 
EARLY sorceiy the prototype of modern Spiritualism, 150. 
EDUCATION (Defective) the cause of the prevalence of the spir- 
itualistic delusion, 154. 
ELEVATION— Failure of Mrs. Kane to produce "rappings" 

when standing upon a lounge, a cushioned chair or a 

step-ladder, 195. 
EXPOSURE, Poetic justice of the, 13.— Mrs. Kane's first public 

intimation of intended, 29, 30. — Details of Mrs. Kane's, 

32, 35, 37, 03, 77.— Of Spiritualism by the Guernillas, 

199. 



INDEX. 243 

FEAR of the Fox Sisters of their sister, Leah, 232. .. 

FISH (Ann Leah Fox) First to conceive the idea of profiting by 
the "rappings," 102. — Learns to "rap" from the little 
children, 103. — Using the little girls, Maggie and Katie, 
for her purposes, 123.— Challenges to the " Buffalo doc- 
tors," 139. 

FISH (Lizzie)— Protesting against her mother's hypocrisy and 
deception, 96, 128. 

FLINT (Dr. Austin), one of the Buffalo investigators, 132. 

FOOT (Movement of the) in producing "rappings," 38, 103, 143. 
— Detected by a member of the " Seybert Commission," 
194.—" Rappings " not heard when held, but heaad again 
when released, 143. 

FORGED testimony, 91. 

FOX (Catherine) — First to discover that "raps" could be pro- 
duced with the joints, 90. 

FOX (David S.) — First to suggest use of the alphabet in the 
so-called " spirit messages," 115. — Dupe or accomplice of 
Leah, 115. 

FOX (John D.)— Never a believer in Spiritualism, 99. 

FOX (Mrs. Margaret) — An honest fanatic, deceived by her chil- 
dren, 36, 93.— Disabused at the last, 236. 

FOX (Maggie)— Her beauty at thirteen years, 210.— Petty devil- 
ment in childhood, 83. — Sent to school at Crookville, 
Pa., by Dr. Kane, 226.— Protests all through her earlier 
life against "spiritualistic" deception, 234. 

FOX (Maria), 82. 

FULCRUM, necessary for the lijnb in order to produce sound by 
the action of the joints, 142. 

FURNESS (Horace Howard), acting chairman of the "Seybert 
Commission "—Letter to Mrs. Kane, 169.— Explanation 
of her refusal to continue the seances with the Commis- 
sion, 204. 

FRAUD— Dante's image of, 17.— Origin of the, 81.— Develop- 
ment of the, 105.— Various forms cf the. 201. 



244 INDEX. 

FRAUDULENT— The "mediumship" of Mrs. Jencken's baby, 
"Ferdie,"160. 

GARBLED testimony, 90, 94 

" GOD has not ordered it," 25, 37. 

GOWNS (Long) put on the younger Fox girls on their first public 
appearance, to conceal manner of producing "raps/* 
123. 

GREELEY (Horace)— Aids Katie, 19, 58, 129.— Influence upon 
her life, 129. 

GUERNILLAS (The)— Exposure of Spiritualism, 199. 

" HERALD " (The N. Y.), 25, 28, 29, 32, 39, 42, 46, 62. 

HISTORY of the " rappings," 79. 

HARVARD professors investigate Spiritualism, 147. 

HUMBUG (Spiritualism a,) according to Mrs. Kate Fox Jencken, 
57. 

HYDESVILLE, 1ST. Y.— When mysterious sounds were first 
heard in John D. Fox's house, 81. — Digging in the 
creek, 95. — Bones of a horse found, 118. — Digging in the 
cellar, 117. — Alleged rinding of human bones, uncon- 
firmed by any evidence, 117. — House said to be haunted — 
an afterthought, 101.— The " spirits " when asked tenta- 
tively say a murder was committed in the house and 
mention the name of the murderer, 119. 

HYPOCRISY of professional spiritualists, 165. — Dr. Kane char- 
acterizes, 214, 215. 

INQUISITIVENESS as to spiritualistic methods prevents the 
"spirits" from acting, 146. 

INSULATION — Experiments with Mrs. Kane while standing on 
glass tumblers, 185. — The results negative, 188.— Partial 
success when placed near a sideboard and wall, 189, 
192. 

INVESTIGATION— First farcical, 122, 124.— By the " Buffalo 
doctors," 131, 134.— By "Buffalo doctors" again, 131.— 
By " Sej'bert Commission," 170. — By Harvard professors 
and others, 147. 

JENCKEN (Mrs. Catherine Fox) denounces Spiritualism, 62, 64. 



INDEX. 245 

JOINTS of the fingers. — Children try to imitate sounds with 
them, 87. 

JOINT of the knee used in the production of " raps," 133. 

JOINTS of the toes used in producing the famous "rappings" 
of the Fox sisters, 139, 145. 

JUGGLERY— Spiritualists attribute it to " mediumship," 198.— 
Confess that " spiritualistic " effects are produced in the 
same way, 199.— Older and more skillful than Spiritual- 
ism so-called, 150, 154. 

KANE (Dr. Elisha Kent)— First meeting with Maggie Fox, 209.— 
Influence upon her life, 129. — Effect of his death on her 
career, 230, 231. — Character of his interest in her, 213. — 
Gloomy foresight, 213. — Efforts to save her from a life 
of fraud, &c, 129, 228. — Characterizes the deceit and 
hypocrisy of "mediumship," 214, 215, 216, 228.— Never 
believed in a single pretense of Spiritualism, 217, 232. — 
Knew from their first acquaintance that the "rappings" 
were fraudulent, 232. — Repeatedly exacts her promise 
not to have anything more to do with Spiritualism, 223, 
226. — Solicitude lest she return to the practice of Spirit- 
ualism, 228. — Fear lest the source of the "rappings" be 
discovered, 226.— Places her at school, 226.— Engagement 
broken off and renewed, 227.— Secret marriage with her, 
229.— Death at Havana, 229. 

KNEES — Seized by investigators to detect movement while 
"rappings" being produced, 143.— When so seized, 
sounds arrested, and when released, renewed, 143. 

LEE (Dr. Charles A.), one of the Buffalo investigators, 132. 

LETTER of Mrs. Kane first publicly denouncing Spiritualism, 
30. 

LICENTIOUSNESS under the cloak of Spiritualism, 237, 238. 

"MEDItTMS" (Well-known)— How they received the expose, 
45, 46. 

"MEDIUMSHIP"— Mrs. Kane driven back to it, 37. 

MESSAGES (Written)— How produced by Mrs. Kane, 172, 196. 



246 INDEX. 

MESSAGES (" Spirit ")— Internal evidence sufficient to prove 
their falsity, 162. 

MERCENARY campaign— Begins in Rochester, 121, 126.— Tour 
of principal cities, 212, 222. 

MOVEMENT of knees of "medium" noted by Dr. Lee while 
" raps " were heard, 148. 

ORIGIN of the fraud, 81, 83, 87, 92. 

PERSECUTION of Mrs. Catherine Fox Jencken and her chil- 
dren by spiritualistic enemies, 60. 

PROPHECY of Dr. Kane concerning the future of Maggie Fox, 
213. 

PROMISES of Maggie Fox to Dr. Kane never to " rap " any 
more, 223, 226. 

PRESIDENT Pierce's wife and Maggie Fox, 223. 

PROFESSION of spiritualistic belief— Mrs. Kane expressly dis- 
claims it, 181, 234 

"RAPS" — Failure to "throw" them to different parts of a 
room, 184. — Always heard near the spot where "me- 
dium" is stationed, 136, 172, 173.— Effort of the will in 
producing them apparent, 136. — Muscular contractions 
their possible cause, 137. — Not produced while 
"mediums" in constrained position, 142. — Not pro- 
duced while feet of "mediums" are prevented from 
touching sonorous substances, 185. — Vibrations in foot 
of Mrs. Kane, felt by Mr. Sellers of the " Seybert Com- 
mission," 194. — Their physiological origin, 202, 203. 

REPENTANCE— Mrs. Catherine Fox Jencken, 58, 59— Mrs. 
Margaret Fox Kane, 233. 

REPORTS on investigations of "rappings," 134, 141, 149, 173. 

ROCHESTER— Outlandish doings told by Mrs. Underbill, 106, 
113. — Mrs. Kane gives the true explanation of them, 
112. — First public appearances of the Fox Sisters, 121. 

SENATE ridicules Spiritualism in debate, 159. 

SLADE (Henry) admits that certain magicians produce their 
effects in the same way that he does, 199. 

SEYBERT (Henry)— Crazed by Spiritualism, 166.— Mrs. Kane 



INDEX. 24:7 

enters the "Spiritual Mansion," 164. — She draws the 
line at the Apostles and the Angel Gabriel, 166. — His 
legacy for the investigation of Spiritualism, 167. — His 
"spirit" mistakes the identity of a member of the 
" Seybert Commission" and calls him by a queer name, 
171. — Though he knew no Latin in the flesh, his 
" spirit" is made to write Latin, 197. 

"SEYBERT Commission" (The)— Its origin and labors, 167.— 
Experiments with Mrs. Kane, 169. — Its conclusions 
regarding the "Tappings," 168, 201.— On other phases 
of Spiritualism, 201. 

SPIRITUALISM— Mrs. Catherine Fox Jencken says it is the 
greatest curse the world has ever known, 56. 

SUPERSTITION"— Traditions in the Fox family about queer 
happenings, 119. 

UNDERHILL (Ann Leah)— Her narrative proven false, 38. — 
Sinister influence over her younger sisters, 233. 

VERDICT (The unalterable), 201. 

VIBRATION of articles when " medium's" body is in contact 
with them while producing raps, 138, 145, 

WARNINGS of Dr. Kane to Maggie and Katie Fox against a 
life of deception, 216, 219, 222, 225, 228, 229.— Against 
intercourse with her sister, Leah, 227. 



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